Prüfung: earth, after rain
by seven dials
Summary: Tainted drugs, a missing target, a stranger collapsing in the street. Three separate points - and searching for the lines that connect them takes Weiss off the books and into a whole world of danger. Rewrite of 'Seuche'. Ongoing, contains dark themes.
1. Mädchen: In plain sight

**Prüfung**  
><em>earth, after rain<em>

A _Weiss Kreuz_ fanfic by laila

Disclaimer: _Weiss Kreuz_ and all associated characters and assets remain the property of Kyoko Tsuchiya, Koyasu Takehito, Project Weiss, TV Tokyo, Movic and any other individuals or companies whom I may have inadvertently left out. This is a fan work from which no profit is being made or will be made, written solely for the amusement of anyone who may wish to read it and of course myself, as it's author.

Acknowledgements: Thanks to pichi for shining light into the dark, uncharted wilderness of my first draft and to Rokesmith for providing me with a map, listening to me talk, and generally putting up with far more than any man should have to. Thank you, too, to everyone who read this fanfic in its original form, and to everyone who's taking a chance on the redraft.

Author's Notes: Several years in the making, this fic started out as precisely two plot points. The need to provide a framework for them to hang in resulted in this. Formerly posted as _Seuche_, I came to the conclusion that I was never going to finish the story if I didn't go back and fix the issues I had with the original opening – and decided in the process to fix everything else I didn't think quite worked any more, starting with the title and working from there. The amendations, or so I like to believe, are both self-evident if you know the original and largely self-explanatory, so I won't go on about them here. Suffice to say that though the plot and the themes are all very similar, there've been some changes made.

Warnings: Strong language; slash; canon-appropriate levels of violence; dark and mature themes.

* * *

><p><strong>Prologue – Mädchen: In plain sight<strong>

Of course if it hadn't been for Takanori's party, she never would have heard of the pills.

Sayu Tanemura had never, in the truest sense of the word, ever exactly been _fat_. She just hadn't been Mizuki, that was all, but that had been quite enough. Sure, her face was a shade prettier and she had the paler complexion, and Mizuki, poor thing, wore glasses. But Mizuki was a gymnast; she was lithe and willowy and long-limbed, with a slender waist and all her body in elegant proportion with itself. There was an easy, effortless grace about her that had left Sayu feeling fat beside her, awkward as a buffalo next to a gazelle.

At first, she hadn't really noticed it. Then it had merely irked her. It wasn't like Mizuki was doing it on purpose – but that wasn't the problem, it wasn't the _point_. The point was Sayu had never had Mizuki's figure and, or so she had started to fear, she never would. Wouldn't even come close.

Then Takanori invited them both to his eighteenth.

Takanori. Takanori Katou, whose attention she had been desperately, hopelessly trying to catch since – God, it must have been since first year. Takanori she'd thought for sure didn't even know she existed, still less what she was called. And _he_ had invited her to his eighteenth birthday! She was thrilled, she was overflowing with sudden hope, she was scared silly – it was a sign, Sayu thought, it _had_ to be a sign...

It could have been perfect, if only Mizuki hadn't been going too. Slim, elegant Mizuki, showing off those long, tanned limbs in a short, wild little dress... a guy like Takanori Katou wouldn't look twice at dumpy little Sayu Tanemura, would he? Not if she walked in next to a girl like Mizuki—

"Sayu-chan, aren't you hungry?"  
>"What? Oh... no, no. I'm fine."<p>

So she'd started dieting. Started avoiding the suddenly far-too-inquisitive Mizuki, at least during lunch. The girl ate like a horse anyway, it was kind of gross really, and terribly unfair that she never seemed to get fat. Much better to hang round with Anko Hasegawa from 3-A. Anko was _always_ dieting, she was famous for it – and it had been Anko who had told her about the pills.

By the night of the party she had dropped a dress size. A new outfit, new high-heeled shoes to help lengthen her too-short legs and Sayu was walking tall, and if all the boys' heads didn't exactly turn to stare at her as she strode proudly in, the looks that _were _turned her way were still more than she'd have got a month ago! It was all she could do to keep herself from smiling too much as she wove her way through the knots of friends and classmates over to Takanori and she'd never have had the nerve to do _that_ before, not back when she was fat.

"You weren't fat," Mizuki had told her, but Sayu wasn't listening.

She'd sworn, of course, that the pills were a temporary measure. The kind of thing desperate full-time dieters like Anko Hasegawa resorted to. Anko was already hoarding her change for another, completely different miracle cure, telling herself that this was the one, this time it _had_ to work – but Sayu wasn't like that, was she? She was different, she was sensible, all she wanted was to drop a dress size, or maybe two. Once the party was over, Sayu had told herself, she would stop: but by then it had become a habit.

Sayu was thin now, as thin as Mizuki. The pills kept their promise. Mama had fussed, of course, to see how she was letting her meals go: her irritation became outright anger and, finally, pleas. Sayu ignored them all. She zipped up her little school skirt, she smiled at the slim, pretty girl in the mirror. Takanori had camera club tonight, which was just too bad, but they'd have all Saturday to make up for it. Maybe Mizuki would go shopping with her...

If there were strange aches in her joints and her head hurt sometimes, if it was getting harder to make herself get up in the mornings these days, who cared? Sayu ate less, exercised more, it didn't have to mean anything was wrong. How could there be anything wrong? Anyway, a headache pill cured it.

Mama, Mizuki – they all worried too much. Life was sweet, and her new beauty cheap at the price.


	2. Fremder: Small beginnings

**Prüfung**  
><em>earth, after rain<em>

A _Weiss Kreuz_ fanfic by laila

* * *

><p><strong>Part 1 – Fremder: Small beginnings<strong>

"Have you seen Youji-kun?"

Autumn in the city. Two hours after sunrise on a blindingly bright morning, yet there was a lingering chill to the air as Omi Tsukiyono stepped from the _Koneko no Sumu Ie_, half-lost behind the pot of absurdly bushy and verdant bamboo he held clasped tightly to his chest. Stepping onto the pavement, he shivered slightly – was it meant to be this cold? It hadn't _looked_ it – and wondered for a moment if it was worth going back for his sweater. Probably not. It would warm up soon enough and he wouldn't be out here that long.

Just inside the store Ken Hidaka, re-arranging pots of Dutch hyacinths on one of the shelves, looked up at the sound of the boy's voice, stepping over to the doorway and shielding his eyes from the sun.

"That you behind there, Omi?" he asked, trying, without much success, to keep back a grin.  
>"Of course," Omi replied seriously, peering out from around the side of the plant. Then, "What's so funny?"<br>"Well, you might wanna put that down. It's like talking to a tree."  
>Omi glared at him, a meaningless gesture coming from a boy half-hidden behind a bamboo plant. "You could help instead of making silly remarks."<br>"What's the point?" Ken asked. "You're practically done now."  
>"Oi, <em>Ken<em>-kun!"  
>"Well, you could've left it to me," Ken said with a shrug. "Ain't like I'd have minded…"<p>

Omi sighed, gently setting the bamboo down in its usual spot and why wouldn't someone _buy_ the stupid thing and take it off their hands? Carrying that thing out every day was getting ridiculous. He straightened, dusted off his hands; he glanced over at Ken, eyes thoughtful.

"So… have you seen him?"  
>Ken had turned back to the hyacinths, but he raised his head at Omi's question. Oh, yeah… "Youji? No." No, he hadn't and he wasn't, by the look on his face, even remotely surprised. Irritated, Hell yeah, irritated he could do but <em>surprised<em>? Not really. It was, Omi knew, just Youji being Youji and not even Ken thought it worth getting annoyed about any more, for all that he probably was. "He was off out last thing I knew."  
>"Meeting someone?"<br>"It's Youji," Ken said. "Of course he's with someone. If he'd struck out he'd be back by now, right?"

Sighing and nodding, Omi headed back into the store to pick up another pot plant. It wasn't exactly as if it was unlike Youji to vanish off by himself in the evenings, irritating though it could undoubtedly be. Still, it was a good sign Youji was acting rather more like himself. The guy had been in quite the slump lately and no wonder what with everything he'd been through in the last few months, after the whole _Neu_ mess… Ken could relate to that and rather wished he couldn't: Omi thought it was no wonder Youji had been feeling low.

Aya hadn't been round all morning either, but Omi knew from long experience that it really wasn't worth getting too worked up over where the redhead had got to. Like Youji, Aya would show up; he always did. He wasn't always around first thing in the morning and that was only a problem when his occasional absences happened to coincide with Youji's far-more-frequent ones. At least Aya was generally on time for his shifts…

Omi suspected Aya took himself off for the sake of a little space and if he'd gone somewhere this morning no doubt he, like Youji, had his reasons for it. Aya Fujimiya had always possessed the air of a man with a lot on his mind – even the knowledge that his sister was out there somewhere, alive and well and picking up the dropped threads of her own interrupted life, couldn't have altered that. And Aya wasn't the kind who appreciated people intruding, no matter how good their intentions, into his private circumstances. He was definitely getting easier to know, though, unless it was that Omi was getting used to him. It could always have been that, he supposed.

"You'd think he'd be back by now, though," Omi said as he stepped out of the shop again, a rather smaller pot plant in his arms this time. "He didn't say he was going to be out all night, did he?"  
>"No… Aya's not round either," Ken replied, unconsciously echoing Omi's thoughts.<br>"Aya-kun? I'd guess he wanted a bit of fresh air, or something like that. He's been kind of preoccupied lately."  
>"Stop the presses," Ken said archly, "Aya's preoccupied and the Pope's still a Catholic."<br>"Be nice, Ken-kun. It's not his fault he's— oh."

He broke off, looked up: a girl was calling to him, and as he caught sight of her she waved. Nene by the looks of it, with dark-haired Miyuki and a couple of other girls he recognized by sight if not by name: the morning rush was beginning.

Omi scanned the shop floor, taking in the displays of flowers standing on the paving, the arrangements in their display cases, Ken, turning one or two of the hyacinths he had been putting out so their better sides were showing. The shop was ready enough, he supposed. There were still one or two things to do but they could wait a while. Perhaps Youji would do them when he got back – no, probably not. Aya, then…

"Ken-kun, the autumn rose arrangement down there… it's looking a little tired. Can you see that gets replaced?"  
>"Huh? Oh… yeah, sure thing."<p>

A few minutes later, with four girls in trim high-school uniforms admiring the cut flowers and pretending to be utterly unable to make up their minds, Aya walked quickly up into the store and ducked into the storeroom to retrieve his apron. He didn't reply to Omi's cheery 'Good morning', but that would have been rather too much to expect. That was just Aya's way and Omi had long ago stopped really noticing it, still less taking offense. Ken, on the other hand—

"And good morning to you, too!" Ken called after him.

Oops. Omi winced slightly, an awkward smile flickering across his face. He really wouldn't have liked to be Youji, when he got back.

When Aya stepped back into the shop a few moments later, hands behind his back as he fastened the ties of his apron, he looked neat and composed as always, and alert as a man who had been up for hours. A bold eighteen-year-old with her hair in a ponytail gave him a frankly flirtatious smile, another girl turned to whisper something to her friend; Ken, apparently determined to be annoyed at _someone_ this morning, gave him another irritated glance. Omi smiled helplessly at Aya over his shoulder, and wasn't at all surprised when Aya contrived to ignore that, too.

"Where's Youji?" Aya asked in lieu of any greeting.  
>Ken shrugged. "Don't ask me. Out's all I know."<br>"He'll turn up, Aya-kun," Omi said comfortingly. "He always does."

But he still wasn't back by the time Omi started to get ready to leave. Aya was dealing, in his usual coldly competent way, with a blushing brunette who giggled every time he spoke though he was doing nothing more compromising than asking whether or not she wished to have her narcissi wrapped while Ken seemed to have become entangled with another, more persistent schoolgirl who was claiming to possess an almost pathological interest in Dutch hyacinths. Thankfully, he himself was largely unoccupied: good thing too, as a glance at his watch told him it was time for him to head off to classes himself.

Which was when he saw the girl. She was on the sidewalk with a group of others, standing slightly to the rear with her hands clasped behind her back. At this distance he couldn't really make out her face – her head was slightly bowed and her blue-black curls fell into her eyes, obscuring them – but from what he could see her complexion was pale, almost as pale as Aya's, and her features were small, even and surprisingly expressive.

Something about her seemed strangely familiar.

"Ken-kun?" Omi caught at his teammate's sleeve, interrupting his diplomatic attempts to find out whether the girl with the fondness for hyacinths was fond enough of them to consider buying one.  
>"Sorry, one moment?" Ken said to the girl, then looked over at Omi. "What is it?" He didn't seem annoyed by the interruption; there was only so much he could find to say about caring for hyacinths before starting to repeat himself.<br>"Do you think she looks a bit like Ouka?" He asked, gesturing toward the girl he had spotted.  
>Ken blinked, picking the girl Omi had indicated out of the crowd. "Ouka? Well… maybe a little," he said, then laughed briefly. "Omi, she's got her head down. Even if she did I couldn't tell from here."<br>"You can't?"  
>Ken smiled apologetically. "Sorry."<br>"Don't worry about it. Ken-kun, your customer's waiting."

Ken nodded, then turned back to the hyacinth fancier and, as Omi unfastened his own apron and left the shop floor, he could hear Ken apologizing to her. He probably shouldn't have interrupted, but… he supposed he had just been startled by the sight of the girl, but by the sounds of things, Ken hadn't seen the resemblance. Maybe he was seeing what he wanted. Maybe there was just nothing to see…

When he came back down, carrying his bag and his crash helmet, Omi scanned the groups of schoolgirls from the comparative safety of the shop. He had wanted to take another look at the girl who had reminded him so strangely of Ouka, but he was disappointed; he couldn't see her anywhere. He supposed she and her friends must have left while he was collecting his bag. Oh, well. Probably that was no bad thing either.

Shrugging off the odd feeling that seeing a familiar stranger had given him, Omi hurried from the store and out into the morning-crowded streets, his mind already on the day to come.

* * *

><p>"Well, <em>damn<em>."

Some days a guy knows he's in for it before his feet hit the floor: today, for Youji Kudou, was going to be one of them. Waking with the sun on his face, he had shaded his eyes from the glare with one hand as he squinted down at his watch in search of nothing more than confirmation of what he already knew: he was late. So late it almost wasn't worth doing anything about it, so late he might as well have rolled over and gone back to sleep. Still, oversleeping, or so Youji Kudou supposed, kind of came with the whole voluptuous package and some things it was worth being late over.

He sat up, stifled a yawn, raked his tangled hair from his face and held it there as he gazed about himself, making a hopeful grab for orientation. Where was he anyway? A hotel bedroom, that much was obvious, but which hotel? Not the Nikko, he knew that place by now. Of course he _could_ always check the matches, but that felt almost like cheating.

He'd known he shouldn't have let himself fall asleep.

Well, silver linings: the woman had done no better. She was still asleep, limbs warm and heavy, a small smile playing on lips that still bore the stain of last night's deep, dark lipstick. She'd been different last night, more austere. Beautiful, but strict; the suit she had been wearing (expensive and, if Youji was any judge, tailored) only added to the impression.

But now she was sleeping, and asleep she was a stranger again. With her features relaxed and her eyes – and _God_ but she had intriguing eyes, sharp and dark and acquisitive, the eyes of a woman who knew exactly what she wanted and last night it had been him – now gently closed, she seemed younger than before. How old was she? Hard to tell and, with some women, the question never arose. Older than him, of course, but a guy tired fast of giggly co-eds.

For form's sake Youji half-considered tugging his clothes on and leaving, but… he looked at the watch again. Hey, he was late already; might as well be late in comfort and style. Finding time for a wash and brush-up wouldn't make much of a difference. Besides, it'd be nice to take a leisurely shower and not have to worry about Ken bitching him out after for using up all the hot water. Getting out of bed, he picked up his discarded clothes and padded quietly into the bathroom, pushing his hair from his eyes again and yawning as he closed the door softly behind him, taking a quick look at himself in the mirror. Did he have a hangover? Bit of one, maybe, but nothing a shower, coffee and a brisk walk couldn't cure.

The woman was awake when he walked back into the bedroom twenty minutes later, dressed in last night's pants and vigorously toweling off his honey-blonde hair. The body she'd bared so willingly for him the night before was now concealed beneath a thin hotel robe, her clothing piled beside her on the bed.

"You're not running late, are you?" Youji asked, letting the towel fall about his neck.  
>She looked up at him, pushing her hair from her eyes. "A little, but I'll get by. You?"<br>"Nothing I can't handle. Want a shower?"  
>"Thanks." She smiled. "I'd ask you to wait, but you'll need to get back."<br>"It's no problem," Youji replied, giving her a lazy grin: what kind of a gentleman said 'okay, sure' and bolted?  
>"Don't. There's really no need. I've got to get to work anyway."<p>

She brushed past him and into the bathroom and there was last night's firmness; she'd put on the self-possessed expression before she'd even reached for that wrap. She was as used to this as he was – no, more so. Well, maybe it was for the best. Besides, he really should be seeing about getting to work himself.

Youji stepped away, listening as the door closed gently behind him, the key scraping in the lock. Discarding the towel, he tugged his shirt back over his head, frowning slightly when the thin fabric caught on a patch of slightly damp skin. He unstuck it and pulled it down, then crossed over to the windows and drew the curtains, looking out across the street. In the bathroom, he could hear water starting to run.

Breakfast would have been nice. They could have found a café, gotten a coffee and a pastry or something… He would have liked to linger over last night's small romance, take his time about the goodbye, but with a woman like this? No. What would that be to her but needless sentimentality? She was a hard, demanding woman; she had places to be and things to do, she simply wouldn't see the point of indulging him. She had known what she'd been after – women like that always did – and Youji had been more than willing to provide it. What else was there between them?

Smiling wryly at himself, he headed for the door, stooping to retrieve and pull on his shoes and the lightweight jacket he had worn last night. She was right, at that. There were other things to do…

No goodbye. No explanation. It was clearly what she'd wanted.

Too bad it wasn't quite what _Youji_ had been after, the solitary walk back to the subway with his mind quite carefully on nothing at all, but diverting though it would have been to walk last night's Miss Right to work there were still things he had to do, for all the pointlessness of floristry. Like stop Aya glaring him into an early grave for showing up late for one. Ken's vaguely maternal scolding he could handle, but there was a world of difference between Ken's reproaches and Aya's Leveling Death Glares. At least _Ken_ could usually be quite safely ignored…

Idly he lit a cigarette, walking slowly; he stopped for that coffee alone. Well he was hungry, and late enough already for a few minutes more not to make much difference.

* * *

><p>The stranger, the girl from this morning, hadn't exactly been <em>on his mind<em>: Omi wouldn't have put things that simply. It was merely that it had seemed… well, it was suddenly much harder to file Ouka away as neatly as he had been doing these past few months, that was all.

She wasn't his cousin. She could never, Omi was sure, have been that; she might, on a second, closer look, not even have looked that much like the girl he had lost but she had made him think of Ouka all the same and the thoughts had left him aching a little, again, with the loss of her. He had daydreamed through the morning's classes, for all he had nodded and frowned in all the right places; Omi had even made few diligent notes, and yet he had taken nothing in. Lunch had come as a sudden surprise.

"Hey, Tsukiyono! You wanna go eat on the roof?"  
>"Actually, I've got some reading to do…" Smiling in apology, Omi reached for his bag.<br>"Well, suit yourself."

He wasn't really hungry anyway, the bento box he'd bought on his way to school lying disregarded at the bottom of his bag. Omi gazed down at the Mathematics textbook he'd spread before him, but he was no more reading it than he'd been concentrating on the intricacies of chiral pool synthesis an hour before. Thoughts of Ouka made it difficult to concentrate – of Ouka, and of the sudden, strange silence—

It was foolish, wasn't it, to think like that? And yet how could he help but think it? The silence, heavy and unnatural-feeling though it may have been, was nothing to wish away, but the utter lack of anything, since the fall, more serious than the occasional twisted tycoon or politician spilled by too much power seemed, to him, like nothing more than the calm before the storm. If Omi knew nothing else about storms he knew that they broke sooner or later. Nature, after all, abhorred a vacuum. So did men.

It wasn't the first time he had thought such things. It wasn't even the first time Omi had caught himself thinking like that at school – and yet, when silence shattered on Mizuki Yoshiya's scream, he couldn't help but feel implicated.

"_Sayu_-chan!"  
>Omi, head snapping upward, slammed the textbook shut. "What's wrong?"<p>

But as soon as he raised his head he had seen it. Pale, pretty little Sayu Tanemura was doubled over at her desk, eyes wide and both her hands pressed over her mouth, slender fingers smeared with hot, bright red blood. Mizuki, on her feet, stared fixedly at her friend's hands, another scream – wordless this time – sticking in her throat. Sayu coughed, weak and wet, and a fresh gout of blood spilled over her fingers, dripping down to stain the front of her neat yellow sweater and spattering the desktop. Another girl, not Mizuki, started to scream and this hadn't been what he meant—

For a moment all Omi could do was stare, transfixed as Mizuki was, as the rest of the little knot of teenagers clustered about Sayu's desk. A moment, no more, before his training kicked in. _Do something_. Had to _do_ something – but what? Sayu was bleeding from the mouth: what did you _do_ for that?

Omi's understanding of emergency aid was enviable, but it was also limited. Concussions and sprains, minor burns, wounds to chests or limbs: he knew what to do for them, but that was where his knowledge ended. This was new, this was shocking and weird and _wrong_, Sayu – his classmate, whose life five minutes ago had been cramming for college exams and planning what to wear this weekend – Sayu was sick, maybe even dying, and Omi didn't have any idea why! He didn't even know what he should be doing, and yet everything he had was demanding that he had to.

"I'll call an ambulance!"

And Omi snatched for his bag, upending it on his desk and scrabbling among his abruptly evicted belongings for his phone, nearly knocking it to the floor in his haste. That at least he could do calmly and know that he was doing right, and yet even as he spoke, his voice clipped and calm as he reduced the girl to nothing but a collection of symptoms, he could almost have imagined he caught the sound of the dispatcher's indrawn breath. His best wasn't good enough, and all the doctors and the hospitals in the world could have done Sayu little more.

* * *

><p>Half past two on a Wednesday and Ken was bored. He was so bored he was half-considering picking a fight with Youji just to say he was <em>doing<em> something and, at this time of the day and week with customers few and far between, it was probably the best way to kill time he was going to get. The morning rush was long gone; things had picked up a bit round lunchtime but even that hadn't been enough. That was the problem with shop work. If he wasn't rushed off his feet he was so bored that having an argument over nothing seemed like a welcome change of pace.

What he wouldn't give to have just enough to keep himself occupied. Was office work like that? Perhaps it was, but what would he know? All Ken knew about office work was that his dad had been a something incredibly boring for a cement company, and a life of filing cabinets and photocopying had driven Yuriko almost as crazy as being stuck in a florist's with a coworker who spent most of his time defining and describing inertia was currently driving him…

Ken counted to sixty as slowly as he could bear, then pushed away from the wall he had been leaning on, shooting Youji an aggravated look. "So," he said, "where the Hell _were_ you earlier?"

Arguing it was.

For a moment Ken thought Youji was going to pretend he hadn't heard. The man didn't lift his head, pillowed on one cupped hand; he didn't open his half-lidded eyes – he just let his gaze drift idly across to Ken, then he smiled slowly and lazily. Even his smile could barely be bothered to try. "I, Kenken," he said languidly, "was enjoying an evening with an exceptionally beautiful and talented young lady whose name temporarily slips my mind."

Ken snorted. "You mean you've forgotten it."  
>"I mean," Youji said, "she didn't feel the need to tell me, and a gentleman never pries where he isn't wanted."<br>"You spent the whole night with a girl who wouldn't even tell you her _name_?"  
>"A woman," Youji corrected him. "She was a woman, Ken, not a girl, and you needn't look so scandalized. I merely spared the lady the necessity of making one up."<br>The necessity of _what_? Ken stared at him. "Why would she want to do that?"  
>"Whyever shouldn't she? Honestly, Hidaka, you have a lot to learn about women of the world."<br>"Why'd you wanna hang round with a woman who wouldn't tell you her name? Isn't that kind of weird?"  
>"Hey, don't knock it until you've tried it. You never know, you might rather enjoy it."<br>Ken flushed angrily; Youji simply smiled again, as if he'd expected absolutely nothing less. "Get _bent_, Youji, that's not what I meant and you know it!"  
>"Then," Youji asked, "what did you mean?" and smiled when all Ken did in reply was give him an irritated scowl. "Well, while you think of an answer, I'm going for a cigarette. Mind the store, okay?"<p>

He didn't wait for Ken's response, simply pushed away from the counter and, pulling the cigarettes out of his pocket, walked from the store. _Lazy bastard_, Ken thought, but even in his head the insult lacked bite. Might as well blame the sun for setting, or rainclouds for getting stuff wet.

On the subject of which, he should probably go water the bamboo.

Sometimes Ken almost wished he smoked. Not, he thought as he uncoiled the hose, that he wanted to deal with the expense or all that crap in his lungs, but Youji and Aya had an absolutely brilliant excuse to take way more breaks than he did. All he could do if he wanted five minutes out the shop was volunteer for deliveries or water this stupid bamboo. He stuck the end of the hose in the bamboo's tub, then bent to turn on the tap.

He'd finished with the bamboo and had moved on to deal with a couple of smaller plants when he caught sight of the woman. Ken didn't notice her becauseshe was female; he'd never been much of a one for that. What he saw was a break in the pattern. Simply, she moved wrong: a woman, hunched over, staggering as if she were ill or if her feet hurt.

He nearly said something then, but managed to stop himself. Maybe she was upset and just wanted to be left alone, or maybe she walked like that all the time and would be offended if he pointed out that she looked like she needed to sit down… either way, it was basically none of his business. Shrugging, Ken turned back to his plants, very scrupulously concentrating on the play of the water over the leaves as the woman stumbled past him, head lowered, gaze fixed on her own feet. Nope, I wasn't staring at you just then, really. You have a nice day now, I'll just… I'm gonna be watering these plants. Yup.

"Excuse me."

Ken started, and very nearly dropped the hose. He'd been so convinced that the woman really _didn't_ want him to get involved that to actually have her talk to him left him totally wrong-footed.

"Huh?" He turned, and the look on his face was slightly guilty, as if the woman – and she wasn't much more than a girl really, she was barely older than he was – had caught him doing something he shouldn't be. "I, uh… can I help?"  
>"Please." The girl swallowed, running her tongue across her lips. "I… where is this?"<br>Ah, she's _lost_. That made sense of her. No wonder she'd been walking so slow. "Oh… Shibuya," Ken said, "about ten minutes from the station. Were you looking for the park or something?"

She said nothing. She swallowed again, took a step toward him, seeming to stumble slightly; almost instinctively, he backed off a pace. How long, Ken wondered, had this girl been lost for?

"Hey," Ken said. And "Are you okay?"

The girl's shoulders sagged; she stumbled again, falling forward. Ken dropped the hose.

Caught the girl beneath the arms, staggering backward as she slumped against him, nearly pitched off his feet by the sudden weight of her body against his chest. Her eyes, when he gazed down at her face, were closed, her breathing ragged and if it had been a few hours later, Ken would have presumed that the girl was simply drunk. Now, stood in the middle of the sidewalk with the fallen hose spattering water across the dusty paving, struggling to keep the both of them on their feet, he had no idea _what_ he was supposed to think unless _what the Hell is going on_ counted…

"Youji!" he shouted. "_Hey_, Youji!"

No answer. The girl's lashes fluttered, her loose, untidy hair brushed ticklishly against his throat; Ken gave it about half a minute before her dead weight combined with his awkward position landed the both of them on the ground, and that was before he caught his foot in the coils of the hose. Great. Just fantastic. Now what?

He was just starting to wonder if he really _was_ going to drop her when Youji sauntered into view around the corner, hands in pockets, cigarette smoldering between his lips. His eyebrows raised when he caught sight of Ken struggling with the woman, the corners of his lips quirking into a wry smile: Youji seemed, almost, to be hesitating on the verge of laughter and what the Hell was _he_ so amused about? If it hadn't been for the semi-conscious stranger slumping in his arms Ken thought he'd have tried to punch the bastard.

"Why, Kenken," he said, calm and casual as a summer evening, "I didn't think you had it in you…"  
>On second thoughts, maybe he still would. "For God's sake, Kudou! She's gonna collapse!"<p>

Not that he'd needed to tell Youji _that_. Stepping forward, Youji gently took the fainting girl's shoulders and, setting his own arm about her to stop her from falling, pulled her away from Ken. Ken straightened, heaving a sigh of relief, and kicked the hose from his ankle, stooping to pick it up. He was about to head over to the faucet to turn it off, but the sight of Youji and the girl gave him pause.

"Is she gonna be okay?"  
>"I think," Youji said cautiously, "she's worn herself out. What exactly happened?"<br>Ken shrugged. "Beats me. She asked me where we were, then she kinda just… keeled over. Has she fainted?"  
>"I don't think so. Her eyes are open. I'm going to sit her down. Can you go get a glass of water?"<br>"Water?" Ken blinked. "Well… okay, if you think it'll help."

When Youji didn't protest Ken hurried back into the shop, turning the hose off on his way past, and why people always thought a glass of water was such a universal cure he hadn't the faintest idea. If the girl had been in better shape, he'd have thought that Youji just wanted him out the way for a few minutes...

Aya was in the shop, propping up the counter and glaring at nothing in particular, though that very quickly changed to 'glaring at Ken' as the boy cautiously pushed open the door. No doubt he'd spent the last few minutes cursing both his teammates by turn for their absence, never mind that he'd spent half the afternoon hiding in the stockroom very slowly assembling display arrangements they hadn't even needed. Ken gave him a quick, anxious grin, hurrying past him and out into the break room – can't stop now, Aya, very busy being busy – in search of a cup.

"What are you doing?"  
>Oh, great, Aya'd followed him. "Oh," he said distractedly, all his attention on the mug he was filling, "nothing much. Youji wanted a glass of water."<br>"And he couldn't get it himself?"  
>Ken scowled at him. "He's busy. You know, <em>work<em>? Did you want something, Aya?"

The look on Aya's face said he had his doubts – had serious, serious doubts – that whatever Youji wanted with a glass of water was work-related. Ken told that look to go fuck itself and it ain't like _your_ work ethic is any better Fujimiya now will you please get the hint and go watch the store?

Of course he didn't. "What's going on, Ken?"  
>"Nothing," Ken said. "Just a girl's feeling kind of funny and Youji thought it'd help if I got her a drink."<p>

And he had tried to make it sound as uninteresting as possible, but when Ken left the shop again and hurried back to the girl's side, the mug he had slightly overfilled slopping water over the side of his hand, Aya was following, a pale and patient shadow. They made it back onto the pavement just in time to see Youji, crouching by the side of the chair he had settled the girl in, straightening and lifting his hand from her brow. Ken raised his eyes heavenward: if you're there, God, grant me the strength not to punch this idiot…

Then the girl raised her head, chest heaving, breath hitching in her throat as her eyes focused and she gazed around herself, and Ken pushed that thought aside. Youji would just have to wait.

"Are you okay?" Youji asked, and even he was stepping back to give the girl some space.  
>She nodded, or tried to. "I'm—" A single word, and her voice broke on it. She sounded hoarse, hoarser even than Ken remembered, and her hand, when she raised it to push her hair from her face, trembled.<br>"Don't push it," Ken said. "You nearly fainted back there. The heat getting to you?"

The girl nodded again, quick and anxious, an unsteady, yet still grateful smile flickering on her lips: something about that smile had Ken raising his brows, trading a look with Aya. _Did you just_… Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw Youji shoot the redhead a glance. Yes, they'd just. Whatever it was had been there, the others had seen it too.

Youji grinned. "Yeah, I thought it was something like that. Gotta say though, you gave Ken quite a shock! He's not used to having that effect on women…"  
>The girl stifled a giggle; Ken didn't. "You're <em>not<em> funny, Youji!"  
>"Yeah, yeah… gimme the water, Ken."<p>

Well, he wasn't going to argue with _that_. Ken nodded and (sorry, it's a bit full) handed the mug over, watching Youji as he watched the girl lifting it to her lips, drinking, swallowing, drinking again. Her hands were shaking so badly that Youji reached out and steadied the mug for her and it was that, the tremor in her hands, that had Ken starting to frown. Dehydration. He'd _seen_ this. Seen it in his teammates – his other teams, that was, way back when – he saw it even now sometimes if one of the kids pushed himself too far, but not this bad. He never let it get this bad, nobody with any sense did. Jesus, this did not look good…

"Youji," he said, and he sounded anxious, "are you sure this is such a great idea?"  
>"Huh? What'd you mean?"<br>"She's dehydrated," Ken said. "Bad. Plain water ain't going to help. I've got some isotonic sports crap in the fridge, I'll go get… no, I'll go call someone. We can't deal with this."  
>"Ken?" Youji said. And, "Isn't that a bit of an overreaction?"<br>"Fuck off, Kudou! I've _seen_ this shit, she needs a _doctor_!"  
>"He's right, Youji." Aya, breaking his silence. "A doctor could help her far better than we can."<br>The girl stiffened, eyes going wide. "No," she said softly. "_No_. Please don't worry. I just felt faint." She sipped the water, shuddering slightly as she swallowed, and if that had been intended to reassure Ken she was feeling fine, it failed.  
>"Really." It wasn't a question. Aya didn't sound like he quite believed that.<br>She nodded, and even that looked desperate. "I'm fine. Really, I'm fine! Don't put yourselves out, I just…" she broke off, swallowing. "I just want to go home."  
>"Home?" Ken echoed. "Don't you know where that is?"<br>"I've only just come here," the girl said softly. "I was meant to be staying with a friend, but…" she hesitated, as if she were trying to work out what she should say next. "… but I got off the train at the wrong station. I thought I could just find my way to the other one, but I didn't… it's much bigger here than I was used to. So I got lost."

She's lying.

Ken looked over at Youji again, brows drawing sharply downward. He didn't know how he knew this girl was lying; he didn't even understand why she'd _want_ to. All he knew was that he _did_ – and, from the glance that Youji shot back at him, his friend knew it too.

"But—"

But nothing. She was fine, absolutely _fine_ and what did it matter that people who were feeling absolutely fine didn't make a habit of damn near passing out from thirst and exhaustion in the middle of the street? No, she didn't want an ambulance or to see a doctor; she didn't even seem to want the isotonic drink Ken had thrust into her hands and the damndest thing was that he had no idea why she was insisting on that, either. She just wouldn't and that was the end of it: I'm okay, I'm okay, I'm okay…

She wasn't even fooling herself, yet what the Hell were they supposed to say to someone so determined she needed nothing? In the end all the three of them could do for the girl was see she got home, and even that she had looked like she was about to argue over.

"If you'll just point me toward the station—"  
>"You almost <em>fainted<em>!"  
>"Ken, if it's what she's comfortable with…"<p>

It was _stupid _was what it was, but there was nothing else they could do. Shaking his head and muttering darkly to himself, Ken walked back into the store to call the girl a cab, hastily jotting down her friend's address – a girl called Shizue living in Sumida, not far from Oshiage station – on the back of the order book for no more reason than it was the closest thing to hand, before reaching for the phone book. For a moment, he had half-considered calling her an ambulance anyway, but he hadn't. He'd taken it out on the phone's touchpad instead and if it only made him feel better for a moment, at least it had made him feel better.

Ken almost went back outside to wait for the cab when the call was over but, hesitating with one hand resting on the phone's receiver, he glanced out of the window to catch Youji bending to the girl, making her laugh – and he thought, _no, better not_. Youji could handle it, and he was welcome to it.

* * *

><p>There was blood on his hands, warm and reeking of iron and, as it dried, growing sticky to the touch. There was blood on his clothes, spattered red on red on the front of his sweater. It smeared his face, his skin scored with a streak of it where he had reached up to push the hair from his eyes: his cheeks pale and sweat-damp, his hands shaking, it had been all Omi could do to convince the hospital staff he was in no danger himself.<p>

They had been too late. They would always have been too late.

Hurried into the ambulance and from there into the ER, Omi had pretended shock. Silent, wide-eyed, he had let the nurses guide him into a cubicle, press a paper cup full of chalky, too-warm water into his hands, along with a pair of tiny white pills he had pretended to hurriedly swallow, then palmed. Better that they thought him lost, trapped just out of reach in the sanctuary of his own shock. What else would they have expected from a high-school boy who had seen his classmate bleeding to death in front of him?

The nurses, he couldn't help but notice even as they led him away, hadn't been surprised by Sayu's condition. A high-school girl collapses bleeding for no reason at all – and by the looks in their eyes, by the way they shook their heads and murmured over her unconscious, blanket-swathed form, the ER staff had seen it all before.

_Looks like we've got another bleeder.  
><em>_Oh, Christ, not this again…_

And then they had left him alone. Left alone, Omi had placed the paper cup down on a side table, sprung sudden and noiseless to his feet and crept over to the curtain, head cocked, listening intently. Sayu was just down the corridor. If he could just—

"Sayu Tanemura. High-school student, seventeen years old, no known allergies, blood type unknown. Collapsed in her classroom with uncontrollable PO bleed—"  
>"BP 82 over 38, heart rate 147, query systemic shock—"<br>"Any response?"  
>"None. Okuda, call the OR, get them on standby – where the Hell's the anesthetist, why hasn't someone bleeped the fucking <em>anesthetist<em>?"  
>"I did, doctor, as soon as she got here."<br>"Well, bleep him again! Tell him it's urgent—!"

Clipped, urgent voices, voices full of tension and of fear, suddenly lost beneath the sound of ampoules rattling on a trolley and a bubble of chatter concerning a salaryman found near-collapse in a corner office. Omi resented him for getting in Sayu's way, then immediately felt terrible for it and hoped that the man got better. The footsteps faded, the rattling trolley pushed away – but then a brisk, compact woman bustled her way over to his cubicle and Omi sprung guiltily back into his chair. He sat hastily back down as she pushed open the curtain and hurried to his side, one hand steadying a blood pressure machine.

"Sit down," she said, and for all she smiled and spoke quite politely Omi knew it for an order. "I'm Nurse Kasaoka. I'm going to need to take some observations. Are you Tanemura-san's friend?" Omi nodded, bowing his head almost in spite of himself – yes, that was him – and saw her smile grow kindly. "I understand this is upsetting, but try not to worry, all right? Your friend is in good hands."  
>Omi nodded again, swallowing. She had said nothing about Sayu being okay – perhaps she simply wasn't allowed to. "I know," he managed, and even in his own head his voice sounded choked and strange, hardly like his own at all. And, "Thank you."<br>"I'm sure," Nurse Kasaoka said, "you don't have to thank me. Can I ask you to roll up your sleeve?"

Mechanically, Omi obeyed. Roll up your sleeve, open your mouth, hold this beneath your tongue, and it was as much a routine to him as it was to the white-clad woman who walked him through it. All the while he listened to the low, urgent voices of Sayu's doctors and the squeak of the anesthetist's shoes on the linoleum, and a machine chiming stridently over and over as if to remind them all – as if they could have forgotten! – that things were bad, very bad—

She would live for another hour, two at the outside. For all her doctors fought to save her, for all the drips and drugs and units of blood, they had come too late by far.

Sayu Tanemura was already dead.


	3. Ahnung: Sowing a storm

**Prüfung**  
><em>earth, after rain<em>

A _Weiss Kreuz_ fanfic by laila

* * *

><p><strong>Part 2 – Ahnung: Sowing a storm<br>**

"_Moth_?" Ken pulled a face, unsure he'd pronounced the English word correctly. Unsure Youji had done. "That's never her real name."  
>"Of course it isn't," Youji said, as if it should have been obvious. "But—" using his teeth, he pulled a cigarette from the pack he was holding, "Kenken— that was what she said she was <em>called<em>."  
>"Who the Hell goes around calling themselves <em>Moth<em>?" Ken protested. "It's not even like she's foreign! Is she?"  
>"No, she isn't." Youji's Zippo flickered and flamed briefly as he lit his cigarette with, to Ken's eyes, an entirely needless flourish. "But you know girls, Hidaka. Or you <em>should<em> by now. She wouldn't be the first to give herself a silly foreign name because she thought it sounded cute. I knew a girl—"  
>"Of course you did, Youji."<br>"I knew a girl swore up and down her name was Carmilla…"

A key scraped in the back door's lock, the door creaked open, slammed shut, and there was the sound of footsteps in the passageway. Omi was home, dropping his helmet and his bag at the foot of the stairs, walking into the shop, but it wasn't that which had Youji breaking off, a startled look in normally-lazy green eyes and saw a greeting – _hi, Omi_ or _how was school_ or anything at all – dying on Ken's lips. Even Aya lifted his head, taken aback.

Omi, a small, almost delicate figure framed in the stockroom door, hadn't made a sound, but everything about him demanded attention sure as a sudden scream. His face was pale, almost pinched, his eyes were cold and determined and his clothes and skin were spattered with grim, copper stains that could only have been dried blood.

Ken found his voice first. "Christ! Are you okay?"  
>"I'm not hurt." Omi's voice was tight as his features, a small, cold, composed thing that spoke only of his own hard-repressed anger. "If you don't mind, there's something I need to look into."<br>"I'm going to help," Ken said, quick and unthinking. "Let me…"  
>"What," Aya said suddenly, "exactly happened?"<br>"Sayu-san's dead," was all Omi said. "I'm going to take a bath."

And with that he was turning away, vanishing back through the door and starting up the stairs, breaking into a run before he was more than halfway up the first flight. Almost instinctively Ken started after him, one hand raised as if to try and catch the boy by the arm.

"_Omi_—"  
>"Leave him be, Ken," Aya cautioned him.<p>

And Ken stopped short. Though he spared Aya an aggrieved look, he had to acknowledge he saw the logic of it. Much as he hated to admit it, Aya's hunches on how to handle situations like this often turned out to be correct and most likely Omi really _wouldn't_ have appreciated the company. Sighing and shaking his head, Ken settled for closing the door behind his friend, controlled and quiet as an undertaker.

"Who's Sayu?" he asked.  
>"Probably a classmate," Youji said quietly.<br>"Well, _shit_." Ken gave the door a quick, irritable kick. "And I guess Omi must have seen it."  
>At that, Youji's lips quirked. He looked as if he wanted to make some arch remark – Ken guessed it was only for the sake of the dead girl that he refrained. "Must have been a car accident or something," he said almost experimentally, as if he were testing how the words felt on his tongue, as if even he didn't quite believe in what he was saying. "Damn, that poor girl…"<br>"Must have," Ken said uncertainly. Well, sure it must've been an accident, but – something about this didn't feel right. "I guess he'll tell us later, when he's ready?"

But, three hours later, when he knocked on Omi's door with a tea tray in his arms, Ken was still none the wiser and beginning to lose patience with the waiting game. Leaving Youji slumped in front of _Tombstone_ and Aya cloistered in his bedroom doing whatever it was Aya did alone in rooms, Ken had gone to the kitchen to make tea, then to Omi, the tea tray serving as peace offering and shield all at once.

"Omi? Can I come in?"  
>For a moment Ken heard nothing, and he frowned at the door – was everything okay in there? – but then there was a sudden flurry of movement, and then the sound of Omi's voice saying, "All right."<p>

Ken smiled in relief, and nudged open the door with his foot.

He was hardly sure what he'd expected Omi to be doing. It wasn't exactly as if Ken had expected the kid to be in tears or anything – Omi was a tough guy, they all knew that – but he'd been imagining… well, something more contemplative than what he'd ultimately opened the door on. What he'd got was Omi sat on his bed hunched over his laptop, fingers flying over the keys and a stack of printouts and floppy discs scattered over his sheets and piled carelessly on the nightstand. It would only have needed a few textbooks lying about for it to look for all the world as if Omi was buried in a term paper. Without them? It looked like he was planning a mission.

Curious, Ken set the tea tray down on Omi's mercifully uncluttered desk and reached for the nearest printout. He skimread it quickly, frowning in concentration: it was an article, by the looks of it from a medical journal. Fighting through the thickets of needlessly incomprehensible medicalese, Ken realized that the story was about some strange new illness, some weird hemorrhagic _thing_ that had suddenly started killing Tokyo schoolgirls…

"Is this about Freude?" he asked.  
>"Freude?" Omi's head snapped up; he blinked, momentarily thrown, though whether it was by the question or Ken's presence Ken wouldn't have liked to try to guess. "You mean that health drink? No, this is a new thing. This is very, very new… sit down, okay? I'll show you."<p>

Ken nodded, first handing Omi his tea and damn whether or not Omi actually wanted any, then dropping down onto the couch He settled in a comfortable adolescent slouch, his own mug held in both hands, and turned to look at his friend. Only totally serious.

"Is this about… you know, what happened?"  
>"Sayu-san," Omi said tightly. "Yes. This is about what happened to her. And by the looks of it, she wasn't the first."<p>

It had started, as best as Omi could find out, just over a month ago. There'd been a seemingly inexplicable rash of sudden deaths in the Tokyo metropolitan area, mostly of young women and teenage girls, but there'd been confirmed cases in older women and men, too. The victims, most of whom were otherwise in good general health, typically presented to clinics and ERs with sudden and uncontrollable internal bleeding, discovered on autopsy to have been caused by rupture of major blood vessels or organs. Surgical repair of the ruptures proved almost impossible due to the general damage to the body tissues, which had become friable and difficult to suture: the victims, almost without exception, died within 48 hours from blood loss and shock.

"Yuck," Ken said. "What's wrong with these guys, _Ebola_?"  
>"That's the strange part, Ken-kun. This isn't contagious."<br>"It isn't?"  
>Omi shook his head. "If it was hemorrhagic fever, we'd all know about it by now."<br>"So if it's not a disease," Ken asked, "then what the Hell _is_ it?"  
>"The best theory so far is it's some kind of tainted drug. Specifically, this."<p>

Omi hit a couple of keys to call up a browser window, then turned the laptop to allow Ken to see. It showed an online advertisement: a purple-on-white banner showing a slender, pretty young woman holding a box of pills, and a line or two of purple characters – see results fast, it really works! If the thing had shown up on top of a movie review or an email inbox, Ken wouldn't have thought anything of it. It looked like any other banner ad, like something a guy noticed without really seeing.

"It's called Charme," Omi said. "It's sold as an appetite suppressant and there's nothing all that unusual about it, except that a lot of the victims' families reported that they'd been taking it for months. Most appetite suppressants are only really effective for a few weeks. The theory so far is that in the short term it worked like every other diet pill, but the victims became addicted and it was long-term use that did all the harm."  
>Ken frowned again. "Who'd bother, though? That seems like a lotta effort for not much payout." God knew there were quicker ways to kill.<br>"That's the issue," Omi said, taking a sip of tea. "But whatever the reason, it looks like we'll have a new mission soon."

* * *

><p>It took less than a week for Omi's theory to be proved correct. A slow Saturday morning with the sun skulking half-heartedly behind thin veils of clouds, and the store had barely been open for an hour before a familiar woman strode through the door as if she had far more right to be there than Weiss themselves did and, who knew, in her mind maybe that was only how things were. Red corkscrew curls, a tight, neat little suit, long legs still recklessly bared and to Hell with the turning of the seasons: Manx, serene and self-assured as ever.<p>

Ken, a plant mister in one hand, raised his head; he glanced over at Omi, and realized with a sudden unpleasant thrill that the boy was smiling. Far safer to look at Youji, sidling toward Manx and giving her an expansive grin.

"Well, well, if it isn't Miss Manx. I knew you couldn't stay away forever."  
>"Now that, Youji," Manx replied, "is a far friendlier greeting than I was expecting. Unfortunately, this isn't exactly a social call." Not that she'd needed to point that out; the slim manila folder tucked under one of her arms spoke for itself. "Since you're all here, I see no reason we shouldn't begin…"<p>

And she strode off to the basement, heels clicking confidently on the tile, without so much as a backward glance.

They formed a strange little group down there in the basement. Here Ken was shoulder-to-shoulder with three guys he should never have met: Omi, straight-arrow high-achiever, dividing the world into the innocent and the guilty and God help you if he decided you were with goats; Aya, son of a banker, discontented and isolated but self-consciously so and more so than ever now his sister was awake; Youji, drifting restlessly from girl to girl in search of Christ alone knew what, taking in everything and letting on to none of it. Where the Hell, Ken wondered, do _I _fit in? Where did any of them? Add Manx, every inch the prototypical executive assistant, and they only looked all the stranger.

Manx straightened, stepped away from the television. A single suspended moment later, the screen flickered into life, revealing the silhouette of a burly man sat behind a desk: Persia, or at least his digital ghost.

"Men of Weiss, a dangerous drug is being distributed in the city. Charme, sold as an appetite suppressant, is highly addictive and has already led to several deaths. Your targets are Professor Morimasa Andou, the drug's creator, along with his assistants Doctor Yaeko Nishida and Doctor Seihachi Watanuki, and distributor Tetsugo Kasamatsu."

Then the targets. First a head-and-shoulders shot of a middle-aged man, smug and well-fed and unremarkable in collar and tie: Professor Andou. Nishida was revealed as a dour woman in narrow-framed glasses with a scarred throat; Watanuki a sly, arrogant young man with a supercilious smile Ken itched to punch. Kasamatsu – tall, slender, dressed like Andou in a dark suit and the kind of tie a wife would have chosen to match – would have been just another fifty-something businessman, if not for the broken nose that made him look rather like a retired wrestler.

"Hunters of Light," the dead man said, "deny these dark beasts their tomorrows!"

The transmission died, the screen winked off. Manx, standing by the television with her arms folded beneath her breasts, switched off the television then snapped on the lights, turning to face them.

"I take it I can count on all of you?"

Ken thought of Omi standing in the doorway with his clothes spattered with blood, he thought of the girl Sayu, who he might well have seen coming to and from school or gossiping with her friends and now was dead. He nodded, quite unthinkingly; he stole a glance at Youji, and saw all the confirmation Manx might ever have needed in his face. Andou could have chosen no better way to earn Youji's disdain than dragging young women into his stupid science project. We're in, Manx. Now what?

"Manx," Omi was saying, "do we have any leads?"  
>Manx nodded once, handing him the data folder. "Professor Andou," she said, "is a former government pharmacologist. He was last employed by the JSDF, working on a project codenamed X-308."<br>"What's that?" Ken asked. "It sounds like some kinda robot."  
>"X-308 was a drug intended for military use," Manx said, as if the interruption had never happened, "but we have no way to find out what the project involved aside from that. It seems that Andou dissolved his team and left his position without warning early last year, taking his research data with him. After that he went underground. It's theorized he's now operating from a laboratory somewhere in the Tokyo metropolitan area. Our agents suggest the bay area as the most likely location, but we may be wrong."~<br>Aya pushed himself away from the wall, looming stern as a schoolmaster over Omi's shoulder. "You've nothing more precise?"  
>"I'm afraid not. We don't have much that's relevant on Andou's assistants so your best lead is Kasamatsu, the link man. He's the managing director of Shin-Akegata Logistics. Don't concern yourselves with his company. We had our agents check them out a week or so back, they're legitimate."<p>

Well, that sucked. Ken sighed, essaying a look at Omi: he didn't look phased, just carried on flicking through the data folder, head diligently bowed, but that hardly meant the kid was happy to hear it, did it? Ken supposed it would have been a bit too easy if Kasamatsu's employees had any idea what their boss was doing with his down time; he supposed that Persia, whoever _he_ was these days, wouldn't have bothered calling them in if there'd been the proof to haul the guy before the courts. But Christ he was sick of Persia shoving half-finished missions at them because he just couldn't be bothered to do any more leg work.

He said, "This hasn't got anything to do with the last lot, right?"  
>"Esset?" Manx asked. "No. Someone's clearly backing this project, but it's nobody you've dealt with before."<br>"And there's only one laboratory making the drug."  
>That was Aya, his tone too flat for it to be any kind of a question, but Manx nodded all the same. "It's all coming from the one source, that much we do know. The Tokyo market is, officially at least, being used as a testing ground to determine Charme's popularity. This is merely my own opinion—" Manx tossed a curl over her shoulder, her expression as carefully neutral as ever, "—but I don't believe Andou or his backers are remotely interested in keeping the drug on the market."<br>"So he's interested in the side-effects," Aya said.  
>"And," Youji added tightly, "he's using women as guinea pigs."<br>No prizes for working out what about this mission was eating _him_. "Hey, Omi," Ken said, "you got any ideas how we're gonna find this guy?"  
>Omi nodded. "I was thinking that maybe I could find the target by following the distribution routes. The drug's got to come from somewhere, hasn't it? If we trace the paths back far enough, it should lead us straight to Andou's laboratory."<br>"Whatever it takes." Manx smiled, then snapped her briefcase closed and headed for the stairs.

* * *

><p>Before that, though, there was another avenue Omi wanted to investigate. If it turned out to go nowhere… well, that really couldn't be helped.<p>

Mizuki Yoshiya hadn't been to class once since the day Sayu died. It was nothing at all, that following Monday, for a student as diligent as Tsukiyono-kun to offer to take some work round for her. The class captain, a girl called Sasaki, had thanked him distractedly, passed him a handful of preparations: Yoshiya-san lived in Suginami with her family, that wouldn't be too far out of his way, would it?

Of course not, Omi had told her. I'll drop these round after school…

(It was a lie, of course, but for a mission he'd have gone to Kyoto and hardly minded.)

The Yoshiya family's home in Nishi-Ogikubo, in a blank-faced, low-rise apartment block like so many of the others in the city, was a trim and tidy little place, tastefully but fussily decorated in neutral shades. Mizuki's mother – slim and bespectacled, with the air of a woman who was carried through life on a current of anxiety – answered the door, ushered him in through a perfect flurry of apologies for everything from the length of the journey and, with it, that he'd had to make it at all, to the fact she had something on the stove. Omi smiled through it all: honestly, it was no problem, no problem at all. He was happy to help, he didn't need a drink, really! Oh, and how was…

Mizuki's room was at the end of a short, narrow corridor. Her mother knocked tentatively, as if the girl were an invalid; tentatively, she called to her. Tsukiyono-san, bringing some classwork. Is it okay if he comes in?

She had been crying. Her lashes damp, eyes shadowed by lack of sleep, the girl who answered the door was barely recognizable as tall, confident Mizuki Yoshiya and, if anything, the hastily-brushed hair only made her look all the worse. Nothing could have hidden the exhaustion in her face, or the hunted, half-fearful look in her eyes. For a moment (Mrs. Yoshiya apologizing again as she ducked out of the room, closed the door on them) it left Omi thrown, unsure how to proceed or if he even wanted to, if he shouldn't have left the notes with her mother, and wished Mizuki well and left…

_The mission_, he cautioned himself. _Remember what you're here for._

"I brought your notes," he ventured. "And Sasaki-san asked me to pass on her best wishes."  
>"Thank you," Mizuki replied. Her voice was low, and shook slightly, and she must have spoken more because she felt she ought to than because she could honestly think of anything to say. "Tell her…" She hesitated, a look of confusion momentarily flickering across her face. "Tell her I'll be back soon."<p>

Omi nodded sympathetically. He didn't doubt she meant it. He just didn't think Mizuki would be able to do that, that was all. Even to him the little white flowers placed on Sayu's empty desk were both an accusation and a reproach. How much worse would it have been for her?

"Of course," he said. Then, "The gym team asked after you, too."  
>Mizuki simply nodded. She said, "All right. I… have I missed much?"<br>"Not too much. You'll be able to make it up easily."

It wasn't as if the rest of 3-C had felt particularly like studying these past few days, either.

And that, for a long, uncomfortable moment, was it. The pair sat in silence, Omi shuffling the notes in his hands and thinking, should I really want to do this? Did he even need to? He shouldn't push it. It wasn't right of him, wasn't fair in the face of a bereavement still so recent – but what, he wondered, if Mizuki wanted to talk and simply didn't know how to ask? He'd seen—

"Mizuki-san?"  
>"What happened?" She hadn't meant to cut him off. Had hardly meant to speak at all – the look on Mizuki's face told Omi that much. She looked awkward, shamefaced even, and yet… I need to know this, Tsukiyono-kun. You don't think that's terrible, do you? "I mean…"<br>"They did all they could," Omi said. "Everyone did. Try not to blame yourself. There was nothing you could do—"  
>"I didn't stop her!"<br>"Mizuki-san?" Didn't stop her doing what?

She blamed the diet, of course. That and herself, for not talking Sayu out of it. Mizuki had warned her, hadn't she? Told her that she had to take things slower, that she'd never been fat to begin with! Told her that no boy was worth this, that she'd make herself ill if she carried on – Sayu hadn't listened. She had never listened at all! And if she could just have done better, tried a little harder to make her friend see sense, then maybe Sayu wouldn't have—

"It's not your fault," Omi told her. Quietly, firmly, only utterly serious; just for a moment he thought of Ouka again. "You can't blame yourself for this."  
>"She should never have died!"<br>"No," Omi said. He hoped he said it firmly. "She shouldn't have. But, Mizuki-san, it's not your fault she did. You did all you could for her."  
>Mizuki shook her head. Whispered, "I should have stopped her."<br>"But if she was really that determined to lose weight," Omi told her, "I don't think anybody could have."  
>"I should have known!" Mizuki cried, and there were tears standing out in her eyes. "She… she just <em>stopped eating<em>, Tsukiyono-kun! I thought she'd soon start again, she felt so terrible, but then she started taking these pills and they… she didn't even _notice_ she was hungry any more after that! And I begged her to stop but she said they really worked and if she stopped she'd get fat again, and… oh, God, _Sayu_!"

She covered her face with her hands and wept. Behind her, the door swung open with a soft _creak_.

"I think," Mrs. Yoshiya said quietly, "you should leave now, Tsukiyono-san."  
>Omi swallowed and nodded. "Of course, Mrs. Yoshiya. I'm terribly sorry."<p>

He bowed, picked up his bag and slipped from the apartment, stepping into his shoes at the door. Then, for a moment, he simply stood in the corridor, head bowed, hair hanging in his eyes, gazing at his feet. He supposed from the outside he might merely have looked upset, but his jaw was set, his blue eyes burning with hard-repressed fury. Just beyond that door Mizuki Yoshiya lay weeping on her bed, lost in her own guilt and grief; her mother stood by her side, powerless to help, unable even to reach her.

What kind of a person _did_ this to the innocent?

Professor Morimasa Andou, Omi vowed, would pay dearly for it.

* * *

><p>It wasn't like Ken couldn't have made the miso if it had come down to it. It was just that at quarter past seven in the morning, with the whole day stretching ahead of him, it was a Hell of a lot simpler to go the Just Add Water route. At least this way he knew roughly how long it'd take to prepare and, with it, that Omi would have eaten something before he left for school. What with the kid up to his eyes in the usual pre-mission crap and acting like <em>beds<em> were something that happened to other people, it was the least Ken could do to make life easier for him.

Monday morning and, heading out for his run, he had found Omi asleep in the basement again, head pillowed on his folded forearms, a half-finished can of long-since flat soda by one elbow and the computer idling before him. Curious, Ken had knocked the mouse, blinked at the screen; he had wished, not for the first time, that Omi's lines of logic weren't so totally bloody impossible for anyone who wasn't him to follow. What the Hell did distribution records have to do with Ebola capsules? Sure Ken wished the best of luck to him, but Omi was on his own with that one…

So he sighed and shook his head, and draped a blanket about the kid's shoulders: what point was there in chasing Omi upstairs to his own room now? All that would mean was half an hour in an actual bed and disturbing what little sleep he'd managed to snatch. Apart from a slightly less stiff neck, it simply wasn't worth it.

Besides, if he'd woken him up probably all Omi would have done was bury himself in distribution records again.

So there was rice from the cooker and pickles on the table, and nori and miso soup, and for all the soup came from powder and Ken had bought the pickles at Tokyu, it was food. Omi, or so Ken told himself as he walked to the basement and stuck his head round the door, would eat it and like it or else.

"Oi, Omi! Breakfast!"

Now get your ass up here or I'll come down and fetch it.

It only took five minutes for Omi to drag himself away from whatever he was doing and make it to the table and even if he had brought his notebook with him, Ken still counted that as a partial victory. More unusually, Aya and Youji both made it down before the kid could vanish again, Aya quietly helping himself to the food and settling down at the head of the table with a newspaper spread out before him; Youji tousle-headed and bleary-eyed, only just alert enough not to miss his mug with the coffee, but present.

"Breakfast," Ken told him, dumping a bowl of rice down in front of him. "Coffee's not a food group, Kudou."  
>"Says you," Youji muttered. Added, no doubt feeling that was rather below his usual standards, "You're gonna make a wonderful wife, you know? One day, Kenken, you will make some lucky man very happy."<br>"Get bent," Ken suggested, raising his middle finger in salute. "Good night, then?"  
>"Better than Omi's, by the looks of it. What <em>is <em>that, kiddo, homework or the other?"  
>And Omi started, very nearly knocking over his soup. "Huh? Oh, uh… it's the mission. It's been a bit…"<br>"They're always _a bit_," Youji said. Then, to nobody in particular, "Kids these days."  
>"Oi, Youji-kun! What's that supposed to mean?"<br>"Oh, nothing. Just that if I'd had hot and cold running pornography at the touch of a key when I was your age, I wouldn't have been up all night reading about shipping companies."  
>It wasn't even the first time Youji'd made that crack, but Omi colored all the same. That was probably why he kept on making it. "Youji-kun—!"<br>"What," Aya asked, effectively cutting the argument off at the pass, "did you find?"

And Omi hesitated, as if that was a good question: like it or not Ken thought Youji had a point. At least the scruffy stuff would have been interesting. You didn't have to be a boy genius to know when an investigation was dying on its feet – if Omi had been up all night he either had a hot lead or no clue, and he wasn't excited enough for it to be the former. Weiss were stuck on shipping ledgers; the investigation was spinning its wheels. Simply, they needed a break.

"Well," Omi said, giving Aya a grateful smile which the redhead seemed totally immune to, "I've got something, but it's not a lot. Manx really wasn't kidding when she said Professor Andou went underground. There's nothing on him since he left his job. Bank data's a no-go, he cleared his accounts last March and there's been zero movement since."  
>"So that's well and truly out, then," Youji said. "Got any good news?"<br>"It depends how you define _good_, I suppose. We weren't wrong in assuming Kasamatsu's company was handling the business end of things, but there's a problem. Shin-Akegata's involved, but only up to a point."  
>"Up to a <em>point<em>?" Ken echoed. "What does that mean?"  
>"I'm coming to that, Ken-kun. Charme is officially on a market trial and currently only available in a few hundred stores, so Shin-Akegata distributes it direct to the retailers. The catch is that the delivery agents don't make their pickups from a factory. The drugs all come from a warehouse in Shin-Kiba, and after that the trail goes dead. However the drugs end up in that warehouse, it's not through the target's company, or any other distribution company either." Omi rubbed at his temples, hoping to stave off an incipient headache.<br>"The trail just goes dead? That's kind of odd," Ken said.  
>Omi nodded. "I'm starting to think we've found out about all we're going to this way, at least for now."<br>"Agreed," Aya said. "Omi, where is this warehouse?"  
>"I took its address." Omi flipped open the notebook and tore out a page, stretching across the table to hand it to Aya. "I figured… well, the drugs have to get there somehow, right? If another company isn't taking them, it might well be one of the targets, or someone who can lead us to them… Aya-kun, are you going to go there?"<br>Aya merely nodded. "I'll handle it."  
>"And," Youji said, "I'll handle it too," then smiled at Aya's frown. "You'll need someone to watch your back."<p>

And, Ken thought, you don't want to go to work. He gave Youji a disapproving frown; Youji, an innocent smile planted firmly on a face that didn't suit it, pretended a sudden fascination in his coffee cup.

Omi turned back to the pickles and rice. Quick and neat as a cat, he finished up his bowl and, stacking his plates in the sink, vanished to his room to shower and dress. Youji poured himself another coffee and lit the first cigarette of the day, picking diligently at his food without ever actually seeming to eat any. Aya buried himself in foreign news, looking for articles about America.

Ken sighed, chin propped in his palm, and stared out the window. Said, "Why don't we buy the pills?" then wondered why his companions were giving him such strange looks. Had that come out weird or something?

"What?"  
>"Why," Youji asked, slowly and carefully as if he were trying to talk Ken down from the edge of the roof, "exactly do you want poisoned diet pills, Kenken? You're not thinking of losing weight, are you?"<br>"Fuck off, Youji. No I'm not thinking of going on a diet."  
>"Then what's the point of having them?" Aya asked, and even he sounded a little lost.<br>Yeah, that had come out weird. "I mean for the leaflet thing," Ken said uneasily. "You know. When you buy headache pills there's this leaflet which tells you how to take them, and it's got… oh, _fuck_ it!"

And jumped from his seat, and ran from the kitchen.

It took far longer than he thought it would to locate the painkillers. (Shouldn't they have been someplace accessible? Never knew when they might need them again in a hurry…) Five minutes of turning out drawers and closets and Ken finally located a box of Tylenol somewhere in the bathroom. A quick check to see that the leaflet was still there and he was running back down again, the box in one hand, almost tearing the leaflet in his haste to tug it free – back into the kitchen, to Youji regarding him coolly over the rim of his coffee mug, and Aya back behind his newspaper pretending he'd heard nothing at all. Honestly, one of these days he was just going to stop helping and see how they liked _that_.

"Are you going somewhere with this?" Youji asked after a long, pointed pause  
>"Look," Ken said. He shoved the paper into Youji's hands, pointing a few tiny lines of text out to him. Yes, Youji's raised eyebrow said, that's a pharmacy leaflet, Ken… "<em>There<em>. These things have addresses on them. And phone numbers."  
>"And you think knowing this'll help?" Youji asked.<br>"They won't print the laboratory's address on a pharmacy leaflet, Ken," Aya said from behind his paper.  
>"They'll have to lead to <em>some<em>thing," Ken countered. "I'm not saying that professor's going to be stupid enough to print his address on the box but if there's a phone number it's gotta be genuine or someone'd have said something. There's gotta be something at the address for the same reason." He folded his arms. Said, stubbornly, "I wanna look into it."  
>All Aya said was, "Suit yourself." Undercurrent of, <em>you're wasting your time<em>. Ken set his jaw against it.  
>"Yeah thanks for that, Aya, but I wasn't asking your permission. And it's your turn to wash up."<p>

* * *

><p>He swore it was a good idea in theory, and certainly way more useful than stranding himself in the shop making lily and rose arrangements until he fantasized about hanging himself with gift ribbon. The problem was Ken hadn't really anticipated quite how embarrassing trying to buy diet pills would prove. If he had any idea quite how difficult the whole process would turn out to be, he would have kept his mouth shut about addresses and pharmacy leaflets and pushed the thought aside…<p>

He certainly wouldn't, once Aya and Youji had left for Shin-Kiba and a day sat outside a warehouse trying not to look sinister, have headed for a drugstore.

The minute he'd got there Ken realized he'd made a terrible mistake. He hadn't had the first idea where women went to look for all that stuff they used and, stranded between shelf on overloaded shelf of mystifying creams and infusions and sinister-looking stainless-steel devices for doing who knew what, and (did women really have a _use _for all this stuff?) endless bottles of multicolored goo, he had felt self-conscious and stupid and horribly, horribly out of place. He could hardly have felt less conspicuous if he'd showed up dressed as a panda or something.

It took far too long to find the diet products and he must have looked a bit too pleased when he did. One of the shop girls, who'd been hovering a few feet away like she was worried he was going to start stealing or breaking things, gave him a very strange look which, for a moment or two, Ken was too startled to return. Sure he was on the skinny side if he was anything and obviously in shape and the only way he could have been a less likely candidate for appetite suppressants was if he'd been a sumo wrestler, but he was trying to pay these people for stuff, wasn't he?

(Didn't they _want_ his money or something? Wasn't guy money good enough for them?)

Selecting a toothbrush and a bar of soap he didn't really want in the hope that it'd somehow offset the painful _girliness_ of buying purple diet drugs, Ken picked his way through the shelves of stuff to the registers, nearly running into a pigtailed college girl. She smiled, and Ken grinned back in sheer embarrassment and murmured an apology.

"Are those for your girlfriend?"  
>"Huh?" Crap, she'd seen the pills? Ken smiled at her again and his smile was now very definitely awkward. Dammit what the Hell was he supposed to say to the girl? Lie and say he did have a girlfriend because it beat being the guy out buying purple diet pills because he wanted them, or tell the truth and say he didn't and have her think he was some kind of weirdo? "Well… yeah, yeah they are, she, um… she's on a health kick?"<br>"And you're buying them for her? That's cool, you must be a real considerate guy! Most of the guys I know wouldn't dream of doing something like that…"  
>"Uh. Thanks?"<p>

If only he had been Aya. Or Youji. Either would have done – girls didn't mess with Aya, or at least they didn't expect him to mess with them back, and Youji knew how to handle it. Ken? He just had to make it up as he went along and usually fucked things up.

At least he supposed he'd use the toothbrush sometime. As for the pills, it wasn't even as if they'd led him to anything, or rather not to anything significant. Once he'd finally escaped from the drugstore and followed the address given on the leaflet he wasn't totally sure what he'd been expecting the visit to tell him. Not that Ken was about to admit anything of the sort to Aya, of course, but it looked like he had been right all along. Man, he hated it when Aya had a point.

The sea breeze tugging at his hair, Ken sighed and slumped down onto the handles of his motorbike, resting his chin on his crossed wrists, the leaflet crumpled in one hand. Well, sometimes hunches took a guy nowhere…

Yeah. Nowhere, Kawasaki. _Charme_, said the leaflet, _is manufactured and distributed by Tellus Pharmaceuticals_— Ken had never heard of them but if they could afford all this stuff they could hardly be hurting for money. Here was the factory, on an industrial estate in Kawasaki-ku built on land that had probably been under water fifty years ago. The head office was in Tokyo proper, in the Maranouchi business district in Chiyoda. It sounded like a fashionable location insofar as Ken was any judge, which he admitted he probably wasn't.

He had parked the bike across the street from the factory complex: a large, busy and seemingly prosperous concern. Steam poured from the chimneys; cars and lorries buzzed around car parks and loading bays like bees round a hive; the occasional person crossed the yards and winding pathways between the buildings, from warehouse to factory, factory to plant office, plant office to laboratory and from there back to the warehouse, hurrying from A to B and back again on very important errands whose purpose a bored florist with an interesting night job couldn't even begin to divine. From here it seemed to be more about looking busy than because there was any real need to hurry. It couldn't be that difficult to convince people they didn't want to be sick.

The chances that Andou and his twisted buddies were hiding out _here_ were not just minimal but nonexistent. It was too large, too busy. Too many people who might have noticed a stray Government scientist. Too many people who could have recognized him: _hey, didn't you used to be Morimasa Andou?_

The catch? If Charme was bloody death in capsule form then why would Tellus want to claim _they_ made it? Obviously they weren't doing anything of the sort; if Omi said the stuff was coming from a laboratory then he would no doubt have damn good reason for believing so. They wouldn't make something like that here for the same reason Professor Andou wouldn't have tried to lose himself here. What the Hell'd they get out of saying that they did, except for bad PR?

This, Ken thought, is weird.

* * *

><p>The warehouse was, Youji thought, a distinct disappointment.<p>

After all the build-up he'd expected something search-lit and heavily-guarded but all it was, was a warehouse. Sure he'd been watching too many terrible movies. Sure the guys from the distribution company weren't to know there was anything the matter with the drug they were shipping out to the stores and there was no need to make things look any weirder than they had to. Sure, there was no way a busy street in Shin-Kiba was going to turn itself out like something out the finale of _Tango and Cash_, but at least that would have had a certain flair.

It stood in an ordinary street with another warehouse on either side, all three long and low and utterly aesthetically uninteresting. The buildings faced onto in a wide expanse of tarmac that probably served as a combination of car park and loading bay, which was, if possible, even more boring than they were. The only interesting thing in sight was the round tower of the building just behind them, with a slate-gray mushroom-capped roof and some kind of dovecote construction perched foolishly on top. What was that, some kind of silo? An extremely half-assed lighthouse? As for security, all there was was a single uniformed guard drowsing in a cramped cabin.

The most interesting thing that had happened so far had been trying to find a parking space, and even that had a tedious solution in the form of the wood museum across the road. What kind of guy seriously visited a wood museum? Hell, who thought it was a good idea to _open_ one?

"Next time, Fujimiya," Youji said, "we're hiring a van. The only way this wheelbarrow of yours could stand out worse is if you painted it pink."  
>Aya's look said one more crack like that and he'd be walking home. "I don't see your car holding up any better."<br>"That," Youji told him, giving him a smirk Ken had assured him was utterly infuriating, "is why we're not in it."

Not that the guard noticed. He probably wouldn't have cared if they had shown up in a clown car and stood by it taking photographs. The man was too caught up in the day's Sudoku to pay much attention to the assassins across the way. Figured, really. Guy probably dreamed of the day something vaguely exciting happened on his watch and when a pair of assassins show up hoping to kill his boss he's doing a damn Sudoku. It would make for a pretty good parable if only he could think of a moral…

"Hey, Aya," he said, because if he didn't say something he thought he'd go crazy, "what kind of guy thinks it's a good idea to open a wood museum in the middle of an industrial estate?"  
>"Why," Aya said stiffly, "are you asking me?"<br>"I don't know. Your family were rich, some of their friends must've been rich and nuts. Cigarette?"  
>"I don't smoke in my car." Suggestion of, and you won't either if you know what's good for you.<br>And Youji sighed. "Aya," he said, tugging a battered packet from his jacket pocket, "I am offering you a cigarette. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to bum a smoke off me without me making a production number of it. If I were you I'd open the window and make the most of it. Now, taking this from the top… do you want a cigarette?"  
>"All right."<p>

Youji nodded. Lit the cigarette he was holding and passed it to Aya, then took another one for himself.

Even with cigarettes, surveillance was a chore. It had always been his least favorite part of detective work; no surprises that being with Weiss hadn't changed _that_ when all it meant was the same old tedium in far less appealing company. Might as well have gone to the wood museum and at least been creatively bored. Youji slumped down in his seat again, hands propped behind his head, and stared out of the windscreen at the security guard in his cabin, caged in his little box like a specimen in a tank. Guy hadn't even looked up yet. Either that was a damn difficult Sudoku, or he was just really bad at them…

Next to him Aya gazed tirelessly out of the window, his expression as attentive and composed as Youji's was sleepily uninterested; too bad Youji had a sneaking feeling he wasn't really paying attention. Thinking of whatever it was Aya did think, when he wasn't thinking of anything very much… Should have bought a book, really. Or got Omi to check the company's delivery rosters, but he realized that if things really did become as vague as the boy claimed beyond this point perhaps there wouldn't be one. It was a bit late to be thinking of that now.

"And if they don't show?"  
>"Huh?" Youji started. Hadn't expected Aya to break the silence. "We come back," he said simply. You know that. "And back and back and back until Kasamatsu shows his face or we get a better lead. Maybe Omi'll turn up something…"<br>Aya didn't quite sigh, but he looked like he wanted to. "Then here's to better leads."

Cars and trucks drifted into view, then back away to more interesting prospects; a lorry pulled into the warehouse next door and made a moderately entertaining hash of it. The dust blew in eddies across the warehouse forecourt. The smell of the sea wafted in through the Porsche's open window. And nothing happened, nothing at all.

* * *

><p>Some days school was only a distraction. Impatient, frustrated, unable to concentrate, Omi had watched the clock and willed the day to pass; he'd gazed over at Sayu's empty desk then at Mizuki, pale and distant, worrying at a tissue beneath her desk; how on earth was he supposed to concentrate on English grammar when the target might as well have been tapping on the window? He'd spent the brief lunch period in the library with his laptop, working far harder and with more focus than he had given to any of his classes, and going hungry seemed a small price to pay for it.<p>

Missions always came first. They had to. It was a relief to be home, to be able to think again.

Ken wasn't in the shop, which straight away was odd. What was odder was what he was doing when Omi found him. Stepping into the break room, he spotted Ken sat on one of the couches, a small purple-and-white capsule between finger and thumb: as Omi watched – had Ken even noticed him coming in? – he held it up to the light, frowning at it as if he wanted to ask it a question, but couldn't quite work out what. Another identical capsule had been split open, the white powder it contained poured onto a sheet of paper.

"Um," Omi said, "I'm home. Ken-kun? Is everything okay?"  
>"Huh?" Ken started, dropping the pill. "Oh, hi, Omi… yeah, yeah, it's fine, I was just… Shop's kinda dead so I took a bit of a break. How was class?"<br>"Oh, okay, I guess," Omi said noncommittally. "You've had a good day?"  
>"Total wash. Went to check an address, but there was damn-all doing. Youji and Aya better get something…" Ken slumped slightly, settling back into the couch cushions and closing his eyes – he opened them again a few seconds later, a frown creasing his brow. "Hey, Omi," he said, "ever heard of a company called Tellus Pharmaceuticals?"<br>Maybe his day hadn't been such a wash after all. "Tellus? Huh… no, I don't think so, Ken-kun. Why do you ask?"  
>"Well, it's just—hang on a minute, I got it somewhere."<p>

Ken straightened, digging in his apron pocket then, with a curse, in the pockets of his jeans, finally retrieving a small, crumpled piece of paper. He tried and failed to smooth down the creases, carefully underlined something on it with a ballpoint pen, then (are you going somewhere with this, Ken-kun?) he handed it over. Omi could feel the weight of his friend's gaze as he peered at the tiny print, first in confusion, then in naked curiosity. Could tell he was waiting for something, as if he wasn't quite sure what he thought of all this and was hoping Omi would tell him.

"It's kinda weird," Ken said into the sudden silence. "Isn't this stuff dangerous?"  
>"It is rather strange, isn't it?" Shrugging his bag off his shoulder, Omi sat down, frowning at the leaflet. "I can't imagine why any company would want to put their name to this. Maybe… perhaps Andou cut a deal with them? He could have offered them something else if they agreed to sign off on Charme that made the bad PR worth it, I suppose…"<br>"Maybe," Ken said dubiously. "Man, I dunno, Omi. This doesn't feel right."

No. No, it didn't. What could Andou have to trade to make Tellus think courting disaster by associating themselves with a tainted drug was somehow okay? Companies and businessmen didn't do anything _just because_, they wouldn't lay themselves open if they didn't think there was something to gain…

Not that this got them any further. Omi put the paper on the break room table, resting his hand on it for a moment, then sat back. It was nothing to do with Weiss what Tellus wanted. All they had to do was see that Andou was stopped.

"No… You probably won't like this either, Ken-kun."  
>What, there's more? Damn, Ken's frown said, that really is just great. "I won't like what?"<br>"I've started looking into Andou's associates," Omi said. "I thought since Kasamatsu wasn't a certainty one of the others might have something we could get him on, so…"  
>Ken nodded. "Yeah, makes sense, ain't like we got any better ideas. What happened?"<br>"Well, there's not much on Doctor Watanuki. He graduated from Kyushu University, did a couple of internships after moving home to Tokyo and vanished about four months back. All his old workmates thought he must have found a job elsewhere and left town, I'm afraid I've no idea how Andou got hold of him. The real issue's Doctor Nishida."  
>"Nishida? She's the woman, right?"<br>"Mm. She used to work for Waseda University. This might be coincidence, but Nishida took sick leave shortly before Andou left his job. She said she was going to have a throat operation and retired on medical grounds afterwards. I thought maybe that was a cover story, but I got hold of her medical records to double check and apparently she had a thyroidectomy in January 1998, so I'm not sure what to think now."  
>"I think she had a throat op," Ken said; Omi supposed he must have looked dubious because Ken smiled at him, and shook his head. "Oh, come on. It's not <em>all<em> gotta be some giant conspiracy. Can't she just have gotten sick?"  
>"But that doesn't explain how she took up with Andou."<br>Ken just shrugged. "Well, cancer makes people think. Guess she must've thought to Hell with being nice."

He got to his feet, brushing off his jeans, headed back to Momoe and the shop. Clearly the conversation was over.

For a moment Omi simply sat there – jacket still on him, bag by his side – and gazed at the door and thought, well, why does it have to be significant? Why should Nishida's illness imply anything at all? Most likely Ken was right and he couldn't find the meaning because there was no meaning to find. Just a sick woman with nothing to do but think and wait, lying in bed listening for the surgeon's footsteps and wondering was it worth it, if this really is it?

Nobody said that re-evaluations had to mean a change for the better, but that didn't get them anywhere either. It was time he got back to work.

* * *

><p>Dusk fell, the sky purpling like a new bruise. Across the waterfront, streetlamps and floodlights and loading bay lamps flickered on, routing the gathering darkness, bathing the area in a sickly, bluntly artificial glow and casting grotesquely attenuated shadows across the largely empty goods yards. And nothing happened.<p>

Youji yawned, tried to stretch; it wasn't advisable for a six foot man in a sports car, but there were times when it couldn't be helped. Next time he'd bring a book. It'd beat trying to talk to Aya… Man, stakeouts in industrial zones really were the worst. At least in the heart of the city there'd have been plenty of other things to see and plenty of places to keep watch from, cafes were always a good one. Here? Sit tight and watch the steady ebb and flow of cars and covered trucks roll past the windows, and hope like Hell the target shows before you give up the will to live. And then come back tomorrow and do it all over again…

"Maybe we should be casing his house," Aya suggested as the light began to fail.  
>"Hold that thought," Youji told him. "Guess we can give it a go tomorrow if we totally strike out here."<p>

There'd been a shift change a couple of hours back. Oh, hooray. The Sudoku aficionado had gone; his replacement, tense and lean and watchful, was far younger, and still new enough at the job to take it seriously. He'd cast a couple of suspicious looks in their direction; Youji had very nearly given him a wave. No Kasamatsu, though. Nothing like him.

Sighing, Youji lit another cigarette, and hummed a verse of _Road to Nowhere_ under his breath as he smoked.

"Either put that out or give me one."  
>"For Pete's sake, Aya," Youji griped, reaching for the packet again, "why don't you ever buy your own cigarettes?"<p>

But they were both in the same boat. Car. Whatever. Either way Youji wasn't going to make an issue of it. Bad enough being here at all without making matters worse by picking a pointless fight. Whatever happened next he was going to be stuck with Aya for the next couple of hours. Being stuck with a nicotine-deprived Aya? No thank you.

Aya didn't look around at the sound of a car engine in the distance, though Youji's eyes narrowed slightly, his gaze flickering briefly along the evening-quiet road more out of habit than anything. Just another car; what else was old? They were both slipping easily back into lassitude when the car – a large, sleek company sedan – swung round the corner and purred down the road toward the wood museum, engine barely ticking over as it pulled up in front of the Shin-Akegata warehouse.

Youji's eyes widened, then narrowed; Aya hastily ground his cigarette out in the ashtray, sitting up straight as, across the road, the security guard pushed open the window of his cabin. He leant out to exchange a few words with the sedan's driver, then the gates swung slowly open and the car turned into the goods yard, coming to a halt just before the warehouse doors. The sedan's door swung open; a tall, slender individual in a suit and tie stepped out, spotlit in the halogen lamps as if he were stepping onstage.

The man's skin was bleached to a sickly pallor; his shadow stretched out across the yard, monstrous in its elongation. Stood like that, profile picked out by the questing lights, the broken nose was only too obvious in an otherwise almost delicate face.

"Target," Aya murmured.  
>Kasamatsu. Youji nodded, stubbing out his own cigarette, flipping the butt through the open window. "<em>That's<em> our guy."

Now this was more like it. All they had to do was wait for him to come back out again…

Until then? Only another stretch of nothing at all. Youji sighed, settled back in his seat and if anything the wait was only going to be all the worse now for knowing that they were watching over more than a potentiality. He had just started to regret stubbing out the cigarette when the warehouse door swung open again and Kasamatsu stormed out, back set and head up, with a younger man – some kind of warehouse manager, by the looks of him – dogging his heels, a clipboard in one hand.

"Whoa," Youji said. "Someone doesn't look happy."

Possibly that had been an understatement. As the two assassins watched, Kasamatsu hurried back across the yard toward his sedan. The young man called something to him, reached out to catch at his boss's shoulder, holding out the clipboard as if for him to inspect; Kasamatsu turned on him, shouted something Youji couldn't quite hear. From the manager's reaction, from the way he fell back, cowed, clutching the clipboard to him as if it were a kind of shield, it had been nothing good. Youji reached for his seatbelt.

He looked up again at the slam of a door: Kasamatsu, back in his car. Leaning out the wound-down window, he was calling to the manager as the sedan's engine roared back into life. The man might have said something, might have nodded; he was already hurrying back to the warehouse as Kasamatsu's car lurched forward and sped out of the lot.

Aya didn't say a word. He simply fired the Porsche's engine and took off after their prey.


	4. Einsatz: Warning shots

**Prüfung**  
><em>earth, after rain<em>

A _Weiss Kreuz_ fanfic by laila

* * *

><p><strong>Part 3 – Einsatz: Warning shots<strong>

Sometimes, even Aya chose to hunt from a distance.

The Metropolitan Expressway, as it swung away from the heart of the city and down toward Haneda, was swollen with late-evening traffic. Powerful executive cars carrying their powerful executive owners back to their homes and wives and the children they hadn't seen awake since Sunday, or to assignations with their mistresses; speeding lorries headed for docks or industrial zones; little jujube-like town cars struggling to keep pace with the rest. Kasamatsu, his sedan weaving through the clusters of cars, almost lost amongst knots of near-identical sedans, then individualizing itself again – _here I am_ – as Kasamatsu veered sharp and sudden back into the fast lane.

Aya kept well back as he threaded through the traffic after his prey. Taking care to keep Kasamatsu's car in his sights, taking care not to stick too close. The Porsche stood out like a dove in a crowd of city pigeons, remarkable and yet only out of place, entirely ill-suited to the demands of its environment.

"What have I told you," Youji grumbled from the passenger seat, "about European sports cars and tail jobs?"  
>"That antique of yours would only break down." Aya said evenly.<br>"Look, only posers and car magazines think white's a good color for something you're supposed to drive… hey, if we said we needed it for missions, think Kritiker would front for a Windom?"

Aya said nothing, eyes narrowing as he dropped back a bit. Much as he hated to admit it, Youji had a point about the Porsche's distinctiveness – and though Youji's car (and it was a ridiculous thing; no wonder the British motor industry had died on its feet) was no better where blending in was concerned and in all other regards considerably worse, Youji wasn't driving and they weren't in his car. The last thing they wanted, after the time it had taken to find Kasamatsu, was to lose him again on the Metropolitan Expressway. He dropped back into the middle lane, ducking behind a Mazda Demio, gaze fixed on Kasamatsu's taillights as the lights of Odaiba slipped past the windows and the entrance to the Tokyo Bay tunnel loomed in the middle distance.

"Aya," Youji said, "I never thought I'd tell you this, but there is such a thing as being too cautious."  
>Aya's eyes flickered briefly over to Youji. "So are we too distinctive or not?"<br>"I dunno about distinctive, Fujimiya, but the target thinks this is Le Mans. You're gonna lose him."

Kasamatsu was driving like a man possessed. Courting a speeding ticket, a court summons, a one-way trip to the morgue. Ordinarily Aya wouldn't have cared one way or another if a target chose to wipe himself out on the roads and save them the trouble of taking him down, but here and now to lose Kasamatsu would be – call it an inconvenience.

"He's seen us, then."  
>"No," Youji said, Youji said, leaning forward to try and keep the sedan in view; not the easiest of things with the heavy traffic and the way Aya was sticking so resolutely to his holding pattern. "No. He's just pissed about something. If he was trying to lose you he wouldn't stick to the expressways. Nobody'd try and outrun a Porsche in that thing."<p>

Up ahead, the sedan vanished into the mouth of the tunnel. Aya followed him down, the erratic pools of light cast by streetlamps and headlights replaced by the steady, sickly neon-orange of the tunnel lights; his ears filled with the thrum of the fans, the rushing of the trapped air. Down here beneath the waters of the bay, the tunnel walls close about them, even Kasamatsu was playing it safe. Neatly penned in behind a lorry, for the moment the man seemed quite content to hold his position.

"Looks like he's headed for Ota," Aya said. Then, "Did Omi mention a home address?"

Youji nodded, expression set and focused, tone serious, as the tunnel lights played across his face. "Wife and kids live in Nakameguro. There's rumors about a mistress in Tsukishima, but if she exists Omi wasn't able to track her down. Wherever he thinks he's going, it's not home."

Back out into the city, back into the open and the lights of the Ohi thermal power station had barely had time to slip from view before Kasamatsu was stepping on it again, lurching back to the passing lane and tearing away. Aya bit back a curse and followed, veering wildly across two lanes of traffic in pursuit of Kasamatsu's weaving taillights.

They tore past goods yards, past shipping crates piled row on endless row; past the Shikansen trainyards at the Tokyo Freight Terminal. Ahead of them scores of red-and-white pinpricks stretching away in both directions; lorry drivers _en route_ to Yokohama or Kawasaki City and travelers hurrying to the airport jockeying with weary commuters headed for the comforts of home, their minds on dinner, a long, hot bath and an evening in front of the television. Get in lane for Tokyo International Airport (Haneda). A plane split the sky, toy-small and illuminated almost garishly by the cabin lights, the flashing red-and-blue beacons on the wingtips. Kasamatsu, heading away from Tokyo, was almost lost to sight in the endless files of traffic.

"Youji."  
>"Huh?" Youji, leaning forward and watching the road, started as if Aya had caught him doing something he shouldn't. "What is it?"<br>Eyes narrowed, thinking of nothing but Kasamatsu, Aya didn't even look round. "Call the others."  
>"Sure thing." Youji reached for the car phone, then hesitated, one hand on the receiver. "Reckon that's what all this is about, then? Trouble with his buddy Andou?"<br>"It's possible," Aya said.  
>"Then we gotta move fast if we wanna break up the party before they do it to themselves," Youji mused, picking up the phone and dialing the <em>Koneko<em>. "You better be going to the laboratory, Kasamatsu. And you, Fujimiya—" he jabbed one finger toward Aya, "—don't you even think of losing him."  
>"I'm thinking nothing of the sort."<p>

As Youji pressed the phone to his ear, Kasamatsu's car veered back across the stream of traffic and into the exit lane. Indicating. Aya slipped out of lane after him, signaling a turn. Dropping down the off ramp after Kasamatsu, heading for the industrial zones. Down and into the heart of Kawasaki City.

* * *

><p>Andou, it turned out, had been working in a box.<p>

The laboratory was a small, squat, Sixties construction skulking in a cracked tarmac yard scored with springing clusters of weeds and the off-white lines of parking bays, alongside which a few ailing trees struggled feebly to grow. It was little more than a collection of low-rise plate-glass shoeboxes connected by covered walkways, its sides – all glass and brushed steel and walls which should have been painted grey to begin with simply to save time – were mottled with the green and brown stains left by rainwater runoff from the impeccably utilitarian flat roof, which time and a temperate climate had revealed as only horribly impractical. Behind the boxes loomed three huge tanks, towering over the low roofs like monsters from a lazy Sunday B-picture.

It was nothing special during the day; by night, huddled beneath the glare of the harsh halogen lamps, it looked one strong tremor away from collapsing completely. The laboratory was an architect's anti-bourgeois fantasy translated into the real world and unable to cope with the strain: verdigris bloomed on the once-pristine walls, cracks cobwebbed the concrete, the glass was smeared with streaks of grime. The building seemed to slump, tired and diffident, to the back of the yard, as if it knew how seedy it looked and was apologizing for it.

From the front, the building looked quite deserted – but in the windows of one of the smaller buildings, tucked neatly away behind the main block and quite invisible from the road, lights burned.

"You're _sure_ Andou's in there?" Ken, frankly incredulous. "How the Hell is that thing still _standing_?"  
>Aya simply nodded. "I doubt he's moved in the last twenty-four hours."<p>

Omi said nothing. His mechanical mind was working: scanning the building, marrying up what he already knew from the blueprints to its three-dimensional equivalent, taking in everything from the locations of broken windows and doors swinging slightly in the breeze to the play of light and shadow.

A target choosing to hide their crimes behind an innocuous, workaday façade was no surprise to him. The inadequacy of Andou's, though, was something new. If the laboratory had been in good repair that would have been one thing, but this place was a wreck. Acquired from Akutagawa Biomedical after a company merger in 1996 it had stood empty ever since, its new owners having found so little use for it they hadn't even bothered changing the signage. It would have been easy enough for the targets to set up shop in there without anyone, even the building's owners, being any the wiser…

One minor detail, discovered almost by accident, had stuck in Omi's mind. The company which swallowed Akutagawa Biomedical whole two years previous had been Tellus Pharmaceuticals.

"I think," he said, quiet and cautious, "this might be easier than it looked. Aya-kun, there's a door half-open over there, that might be a good way to get in. Youji-kun, Ken-kun… could you check the laboratories? It's not an objective, but I think we should destroy the drug if we can."  
>"Gotcha." Ken again, nodding briskly. "I'm on it."<p>

The sedan was there again, parked rather more neatly than it had been the night before when Aya and Youji, watching from across the road, had seen Kasamatsu leave it, lights burning, skewed across two of the marked bays. It had turned out to be a flying visit, but a vital one: ten minutes after pulling up Kasamatsu had stormed from the laboratory, a diminutive, bespectacled woman in a white dust coat following in his wake. She had stood there, silent and disinterested, as Kasamatsu harangued her about being fobbed off, demanded to know why Andou was refusing to see him. Nishida had listened silently. Had promised him a meeting 'tomorrow night'. She had pursed her thin lips as Kasamatsu's car pulled away, then turned on her heel and strode off, her small, slender figure swallowed up by the shadows around the building.

It seemed strange, after struggling for so long to get anywhere at all, that everything should have been resolved so neatly. A meeting in a day – it could hardly have worked out better if they had stage-managed it…

Tonight, too, it was to be Weiss's show.

The building was old; security was a sham. It was the work of a moment for Aya, his dark clothing leaving him almost lost to the shadows, to slip through the invitingly open fire door.

Inside, the old laboratory smelt of dust and decay and damp rot and, as a grace-note, of chemicals and some kind of gas; graffiti tags had been scrawled on the walls near the open door with its smashed, extinguished 'fire exit' sign, but as Aya slipped further from the door, the signs of vandalism tailed off. Something about the atmosphere of the place – the smell, perhaps, or the long, emptily echoing corridors he was walking through – seemed to discourage transients and bored teenagers alike.

Perhaps whatever it was they felt was working on him too. Though Aya walked quietly, his footsteps still sounded too loud; he could almost have wished he didn't have to stick to the shadows. The only light slanted into the corridor from the large windows that lined one side of it, windows which opened out onto what the original plans must have envisioned as a manicured courtyard garden: now gone to seed, the grass stood tall and dry and wild as savannah, the single tree overgrown and sickly-looking. Aya walked on, ignoring the courtyard's descent into atavism, the broken windows, the way the moonlight and the floodlights played along the corridor floor. The building felt empty, smelt the same and, going by the undisturbed dust in the corridor, nobody had walked this way in some time…

And yet he was not alone.

Voices. He'd heard them caught and carried on the still night air as he slipped through the door, then growing louder and clearer as he stalked the empty corridors. Kasamatsu speaking that one bit too loud, his tones harsh and clipped; then another man, his voice quieter and harder to catch. A man with an educated voice, who spoke as if he was used to being listened to: Professor Andou, or so Aya supposed. Clearly, whatever they were talking about, Kasamatsu was not happy. And, as the businessman's voice grew still louder, still more angry, clearly Andou couldn't have cared less.

Two, then. Not ideal but neither target was young or used to physical exertion and, hopefully at least, neither would be armed. At least their argument would be distracting them.

Stopping in a small side corridor (signs of life here, of footprints tracking back and forth along the dusty hallway and rubbing the middle of the floor quite clean) Aya paused, head raised, listening to the sound of the men's voices, then nodded once.

Upstairs, then: moving near-silently, knowing himself unobserved but still instinctively sticking to the scant shadows, Aya flitted ghostlike down the corridor and into the stairwell, following the tracks left by the passage of the targets' feet. Kasamatsu was shouting now – the business, the bottom line, do you have the first idea, Professor, how much trouble your little science fair project's made for me? – slamming the heel of one hand hard against the table; Andou, on the other hand, was speaking so quietly Aya could hardly hear him at all.

The first thing he noticed as he reached the top of the stairs was the warm light from Andou's commandeered offices spilling out into the corridor through an open door, casting a soft glow quite unlike the sharp, pale moonlight that had flooded the halls below. Aya was about to step out into the corridor, only to be brought up short by the sound of footsteps and an ear-splitting _crash_; a door slamming, abruptly cutting off the only real illumination the corridor had.

Tensing, the breath catching in his throat, Aya dropped back into the gloom and lost himself. Standing sentry-still, katana hidden in the folds of his coat, he watched from the corners of his eyes as a man, gaunt and stiff-backed, stalked back down the corridor toward him. Kasamatsu again, instantly recognizable even here. Aya waited, poised to strike, for the man to enter the stairway – he could only watch as Kasamatsu slipped through his would-be murderer's grasp, striding straight down the passageway and away.

Aya watched him go incuriously, stepping back into the corridor and closing the door silently behind him; all he was thinking was _no_. Professor Andou, securely ensconced in his offices, was still the primary target.

Kasamatsu would simply have to wait.

* * *

><p>Every target fucked up someplace: that was why they ended up dead. Though the laboratory wasn't large, Youji and Ken could easily have spent all night searching the building and found nothing; that, though, had been where Andou had gotten it wrong. All it would have taken was for the Professor and his buddies to leave a few more lights on, and to sweep the halls from time to time.<p>

Someone out there thought Andou and his two cronies were smart. Hell, they were doctors, right? So why hadn't any of them realized that working from lighted rooms in otherwise darkened buildings and leaving footprints all over dust-furred corridor floors was a painfully dumb thing to do? Here they were taking so much trouble to fly beneath the radar, even hiding out in a falling-apart shithole like this, and it all came completely undone because none of them had figured out that a lighted room was, generally speaking, an occupied one. They might as well have given maps out at the door, or hung up a sign.

Ken thought he'd never stop being amazed by how incredibly stupid smart people could be. He would never have a doctorate in anything and he knew this was stupid…

"Christ," he muttered to Youji, "these people are goddamn idiots."  
>"Well, nobody actually expects assassins to drop by."<br>"Sure, but if I was making Ebola drugs I'd have the sense to know someone might like to talk to me about it…"  
>"If you were making Ebola drugs," Youji told him, "they wouldn't work."<p>

And headed off down the corridor, moving near-soundlessly toward the source of the light. Ken glared at his retreating back, told himself that he knew where Youji slept and he'd get him for it tomorrow, then followed. What else was he supposed to do? They were still on a mission, after all… though, if the targets kept _this_ up, it most likely wouldn't be a very long one.

The light, bathing the far end of the absurdly long corridor they were slowly making their way down in warm summer-gold, turned out to be spilling from an open doorway. Drawing nearer, moving quiet and careful as a stalking cat, Ken caught the sound of the squeak of a man's shoes against linoleum; the low murmur of the targets' desultory conversation and what few actual words he could catch made no sense to him whatsoever; the hiss and gurgle of water running from a faucet and splashing into a sink. The _tick, tick_ of a woman's heels as she hurried after the man, her footfalls louder by far than those of the two assassins creeping toward her door…

And then, closer still, there was the smell. Sudden and sharp as the cry of a guard, it brought him up short.

Youji drew back, clapping one gloved hand over nose and mouth; Ken pulled a face, nose wrinkled, upper lip drawn back to expose his teeth. It smelled not exactly bad, more like _strange_: sharp, sweetish and yet somehow abruptly chemical, a smell that scoured the sinuses and went right to the head. A guy could get drunk on that smell, or something very close to it. Ken stumbled back a pace, placed one hand on the wall to steady himself.

"Jesus," he whispered, "what the Hell are they doing in there?"  
>"Maybe she's doing her nails," Youji murmured. Then, when Ken merely looked blank: "Acetone, kiddo. I don't know what's worse, your understanding of science or your understanding of women."<p>

And what did that have to do with it? Ken glared at him – Christ, Youji, you could at least _try _to talk sense! – then, as Youji stood hesitating by the doorway as if he were wondering if he should go in, pushed past him and, ready or not, into the room.

Light. So bright after the corridors it had him squinting, raising one arm to shield his eyes. Ken stopped short, blinking into the glare. What the _Hell_—it was like something out of a movie in here, all gleaming stainless steel and white surfaces and piles of books and paper and, stood in the center of one of the benches, an array of Bunsen burners caught in a tangle of complicated-looking glassware. Ken stared at it. He couldn't even have guessed what most of the stuff on the was _called_, still less what it thought it was for.

Caught about the sides of the glassware and the papers, and almost incidental to them, the figures of a young man and a woman at least ten years his senior. The man's back was to the door, all his attention on some other piece of science trapped in a glass-fronted cabinet; the woman, bent over a rack of small tubes and scribbling something on a notepad, raised her head and frowned at Ken over the rims of her glasses.

Youji finally made it through the door.

"_Dammit_," the man was muttering, "fume cupboard's still on the fritz—"

And the woman stood, the legs of the stool she had sat on scraping against the linoleum. "What," she demanded, "the _Hell_ are you doing in my laboratory?"

Well, shit.

The man at the fume cupboard started, turned on the spot, the look in his eyes shading from confusion to shock, then finally to alarm. The woman simply gazed at them, her hands planted firmly on the desk and her jaw set. No fear from her: no. Nothing but the righteous anger of a woman interrupted in the middle of something important.

So much for surprise, though he'd blown that one but good the minute he walked in the door. Nothing for it, then… Ken started forward, raising one hand as he bared the claws of his bugnuks: Nishida gave him absolutely nothing. No fear. Not even a momentary flinch. He might as well have shown up with a goddamn water pistol for all she cared. The woman simply held her ground and _if you're quite finished_, hereyes seemed to be saying, _I'd like to get on with my work _– behind her, something moved. Too sudden and too sharp to be anything good, Watanuki moved—

"_Youji_!" You stupid bastard!

He'd been too busy watching the woman, hadn't he? Youji's head snapped up, he half-turned – found himself staring right down the muzzle of a gun. Ken froze.

"_Stop_!" Watanuki shouted. "Don't come any closer!"

And he was smiling. Eyes wide and working their way loose, Watanuki was smiling as he leveled the gun he held in one shaking hand at Youji's head. Jesus Christ, Ken thought, that thing's a goddamn _toy_ – nice detailing with nothing to back it up, the kind of .22 pistol favored by idiots who wanted to look cool and precisely nobody else, except for the occasional pro who didn't need any more gun than that to make their point. Either Watanuki was very, very good or he'd seen too many movies and didn't have the first idea what he was doing. Ken chose Door Number Two, but an idiot with a gun's still got a fucking _gun_—

Ken pushed past Youji and ran. Leapt over the bench, scattering papers and books, casting umpteen thousand yens' worth of equipment over the bench and to the floor in a madness of breaking glass and spilling chemicals, as he sprung at Watanuki: you've got the woman, Youji, now don't screw this up!

And then he was on him and no time to wonder about what Youji was doing anymore. A sudden sharp _crack_, so loud and so close it nearly deafened him: Watanuki's finger had tightened on the trigger as Ken caught him about the midsection, slamming him back hard against the fume cupboard. The little .22 discharged harmlessly over the boy's shoulder, the bullet burying itself in the ceiling as Ken bore him to the floor, wrestling with him for the pistol.

Don't screw this up, Hidaka. Just don't screw this up.

* * *

><p>From the darkened corridor Aya had walked down, the glowing golden thread of illumination visible around the four edges of Andou's office door was only an obvious clue as to his whereabouts. A thin, pale rectangle of light betraying the presence of one of the dark.<p>

Kasamatsu had slammed the door behind him; Aya opened it gently, creeping into Andou's brightly-lit office suite quiet and deliberate as a father entering the room of his sleeping child. The faintest click of the latch as he closed the door was the only sound he made: one hand on the doorknob, Aya froze. Caught his breath, waiting—

Nothing. He relaxed, slipping away from the door.

Back to the door, his mind elsewhere, the target hadn't so much as stirred. Professor Andou – in the flesh nothing but another disappointment; just one more unremarkable middle-aged man, stocky and bespectacled and running to fat – stood by the windows with his hands behind his back, watching over the untamed yards. Lost in his thoughts, the target gazed out at too-long grass, swaying back and forth as it was tumbled by the late night wind. A wild night, this.

Andou had heard nothing: he saw the stranger's figure swim up behind him in the dull reflection cast on the pane of the window, though, and their gazes met in the glass – met and locked and, for a single suspended moment, that was all. Too startled, for a moment, to know how he should have been reacting, Andou's brown eyes met Aya's narrowed violet ones, and for all the darkness in the glass had half-swallowed Aya's reflection, his gaze was still terrible in its focus. The shadows couldn't conceal Aya's glare, or the shine of the blade of his katana. A moment, no more – then Andou's eyes widened and he turned, one hand raised protectively over his chest.

"What do you want?"

Surprised now. Even wrong-footed. No sign of the obscene confidence with which he had handled Kasamatsu. He could turn his back on an angry accomplice, but a pale stranger with a naked sword? Kasamatsu's anger Andou would have been expecting; Aya – silent, implacable – was an unknown. He yelped and tried to back away when the redhead raised the katana and took a step toward him, but he was already at the window and nowhere to go but to break it and jump, and the fall would have spelt death surely as the stranger in his office did.

"Do you want money?" Andou asked, his words tumbling over one another in his haste. "I have money, you know… I can get more if you let me go home and get it – I have a car outside…"

Aya didn't want Andou's car, and had no need of his money. He didn't so much as break stride as he crossed the dirty, grey-blue carpet, stalking toward the scientist backed against the window – God, how calmly he walked! A madman would have hurried, eager to see blood spilled; a maniac strung the moment out, savoring his victim's fear. Aya simply walked: he was a man intent on finishing a job, that was all, a man who wanted nothing more than to see the deal concluded. How could Andou have bargained with that?

"What _is_ it? You… just tell me what it is! If it's not money… the data's in the laboratories, if you'd just let me—" He broke off, blood draining from his face, biting back a gasp. "What do you _want_ with me, damn you?!"

The maniac would have laughed at that; the madman finished it already. Aya was silent, his face as closed and inhuman as an avenging angel's as his grip shifted on the hilt of the sword. The Professor's shoulders were pressed hard against the glass, his face a mask of panic, his gaze fixed on the katana: his back would have been cold. Aya stood a few seconds and a lifetime away, almost close enough to touch – almost.

"Just tell me what you— Who the _Hell_ do you think you are?"  
>"Weiss." Aya's voice was as level as his gaze. "The white hunter."<p>

Maybe the target understood him, maybe not: Andou's lips parted as if he wanted to say something more, but there were no words and even like this – a cornered animal, given to animal responses – he was only unremarkable. The blade of the raised katana reflected a slice of Andou's own face back to him for a split second, and then there was only agony. Andou's lips opened in a silent scream, his eyes white-rimmed and bulging. Sharp, tearing, excruciating pain for a long moment: after that there was nothing at all.

Such a death was never pretty, but at least it came quick. Professor Andou's body slid from the blade of the katana and landed on the floor with a heavy thump, blood seeping from the single wound.

Aya shut out the lights.

* * *

><p>To Youji's eyes, there was no such thing as a textbook assassination. But there were good nights with Weiss and there were bad ones, and Tuesday night in the old Akutagawa laboratory was definitely turning into one of the bad ones.<p>

Doctor Yaeko Nishida had never looked harmless. She may have been small and slight and unremarkable, bookish and unathletic in glasses and a white dust coat, but even stood behind the benches with a pen in her hands something about her had suggested, don't underestimate this one. You never underestimated the ones who seemed to find no fear in dying.

He must have hesitated when he went for her. Youji knew he always would with women, and sensing an opening Nishida took it. She was all sudden motion and quick, lethal grace, everywhere and nowhere at once. He thought he had her for a split second when she paused to catch her breath, but he blew it again – hesitant, always hesitant – and she pivoted like a dancer and caught him a lucky blow in one side that knocked him backward, had him biting back a gasp. How the Hell was he supposed to take this woman down if she wouldn't stay still long enough for him to do it?

The worst part of it was Youji wasn't sure he minded. (Dammit, Ken, you _know_ you should have taken the woman!)

It was only luck that had a length of wire looping about one of Nishida's ankles. Youji pulled her off-balance, she had fallen, landing heavily on one side with a hoarse cry of pain: even that she was equal to. Her fingers scrabbled about her, she snatched at a broken flask that lay by her side and though the shard cut into her fingers, leaving her hands torn and bleeding, she worked at the wire until it snapped, scrambling gracelessly back to her feet as Youji, cursing, coiled the wire back into his watch.

"Children," she muttered, as if she hardly meant him to hear it. Then, louder, "Get _out_ of my laboratory!"  
>"Sorry," Youji told her; to himself he said, <em>think of the girls<em>. A woman who treated women like trash was every inch as contemptible as any man who did the same. "Sorry, Doctor. I can't do that."

Seconds out. Round two. He came for her again, the wire gleaming between his fingers; again she moved. Moved forward where he'd thought she'd duck away and, temporarily wrong-footed, Youji took a pace back, instinctively raising his arms; he only realized he must have let go of the wire when he heard it snap back on itself again. Sure he'd been counting on a struggle – since when did the targets come quiet? – but he hadn't expected a fight! She was a scientist, she was a woman, she was near as dammit twice his age… God _damn_ it, Yaeko Nishida wasn't supposed to be like this!

The blow caught him in the ribs, just below the solar plexus; it sent him stumbling back a pace. There had been power behind it, far more than he would have expected from a woman like this. Youji was brought up hard when his back struck one of the workbenches, catching him a blow about the waist that left him more startled than hurt. He simply hadn't considered was that maybe Nishida's confidence sprung from being damn sure she wasn't going to die—

"Oh, _shit_."

Ken. Then the loud, flat _crack_ of the gun.

Oh, God damn. Fighting back a sudden onrush of panic, Youji turned just in time to see the boy throw himself flat. The bullet must have grazed his side as it tore into the monitor of an idling computer. The screen shattered, the monitor exploded; Ken wrapped his arms about his head, crying out sharp and sudden when a shard of burning glass struck his forearm. Electricity crackled, jumping between suddenly broken connections as the shattered computer started to burn, sending plumes of thick, choking black smoke into the already foul-smelling air.

Doctor Nishida must have dropped the floor when Ken did and now she made a break for it, crawling behind one of the benches to hide. Youji, all his attention on the man with the gun, let her go – at least for now. Cursing, stumbling away from the burning computer, Watanuki was casting about himself for Ken, wiping at his stinging eyes: the boy was already on his feet, springing for him sudden and soundless and Christ, the idiot had left himself wide open again!

"Ken!"

Wasn't listening, was he?

Watanuki screamed. Screamed and lashed out wildly and desperately at his attacker, knocking Ken backward and into a cabinet of glassware which crashed to the ground, the doors bursting open to strew flasks and beakers and test tubes both shattered and whole all over the floor. Dazed and aching, shards of glass caught in the folds of his jacket and gleaming in his dark hair, Ken pushed himself back to his knees and clambered unsteadily to his feet, only to find himself staring straight down the barrel of Watanuki's little .22.

"Ken!" Youji cried again. God _dammit_, Hidaka, what the _Hell_ were you thinking?!  
>Watanuki grinned, terrible and twisted, the smile of a child torturing a cat. "<em>Got<em> you!"  
>"Oh, fuck off!" Ken shouted and, heedless of the gun, punched him.<p>

A soft _click_ just before the blow struck home told a tale of blades slipping into place; the too-bright lights caught, for an instant, on the metal of Ken's bugnuk claws.

Watanuki howled in sudden pain, staggering backward. The gun flew from his hands and skittered across the floor to rest in the shadows as he reached for his damaged face, blood flowing warm and thick between his fingers as he pressed them to his cheeks. Stumbling, he half-turned, his wild gaze searching, frantic.

"Yaeko!" he shouted, and for all his pain and his panic, he sounded angry. "Yaeko, you _promised_—!"

He got no further. Ken pressed his advantage. As Youji watched, the boy's bugnuk claws caught Watanuki across the back and side, ripping him almost in two. Blood spattered across Ken's face and arms as Watanuki stiffened, muscles going into spasm. For a moment he stood there, eyes bulging and lips parted in a silent scream, then the scientist's arms fell to his sides, his legs went slack and he pitched bonelessly forward, blood leaking from the terrible tears scored across body and face. Still, silent and spent.

Ken stepped away, giving Youji a helpless smile – then flinched at the sudden soft _click_ of metal on metal. The sound of the hammer being drawn back on a gun.

Nishida. Nishida, standing by the broken fume cupboard and leveling the little .22 at Ken's head, regarding him coolly down the length of the barrel, her bloodstained fingers leaving smears along the grip. The boy took a pace back, dark eyes wide: Youji cursed fluently and creatively. Cursed Ken for not keeping a better eye on the situation and letting his guard drop as soon as Watanuki was out of the picture, cursed himself for turning his back on the goddamn woman in the first place. Out of the frying pan into the same identical frying pan, only this time, with Nishida halfway across the room, there was no way for Ken to fight back…

At least, with Watanuki lying dead at Ken's feet, all Nishida's attention was on him. All Youji could hope for was that the woman was every bit as bad as she seemed and wouldn't simply shoot the kid dead where he stood. Moving slowly, taking care not to draw attention to himself, he reached for the catch that freed the wire from his watch.

Stall her, Youji thought frantically, hoping against hope that Ken would somehow get the message. Be stubborn, be obstructive… dammit, be _yourself_, kiddo, you're _good_ at that. I don't care how you do it, Ken, just _stall _her—

"Now then," Nishida said: oh, so she _did_ want to talk. Youji relaxed. Thank you, Doctor, you just bought us both some time. "Would youcare to tell me what you think you're doing in my laboratory?"  
>Ken laughed. Startled, Youji could tell, perhaps simply by the question itself. "Go to Hell."<br>Nishida shook her head, clicked her tongue. "Stubborn," she sighed. "I suppose I should have expected it. But I think you misunderstand me. I wasn't asking if you _wanted_ to tell me why you came here, but if it's the data you're after, I'm afraid you're going to have to—"

Nishida broke off. She yelped in surprise and pain as a length of deceptively fine wire wrapped itself tightly about the muzzle of the gun and it was yanked forcefully from her hand. She drew a sharp breath, drawing back her hand as if it had been scalded, as Youji's own fingers closed about the butt of the .22.

"Youji!"  
>Looked like Nishida hadn't been the only one who hadn't seen that coming. Ken was gazing at him, and the look in his eyes was an admixture of confusion and of sheer relief. "Damn, Ken," Youji said teasingly, "but you've got one Hell of a knack for getting yourself in deep, haven't you?"<p>

Cutting the wire about the gun, letting the rest snap back inside his watch, Youji tossed the gun back to Ken. The boy caught it one-handed, giving Youji a questioning look as he did, but guessing correctly what his teammate was hoping he'd do with it. Tugging off his gloves – heavy, clumsy things, far too much so to allow him to use a pistol with any degree of accuracy – Ken aimed the gun at Nishida, keeping her covered as Youji readied the wire. And he hesitated, he would always hesitate, but it was only to think of the others. Of all the poor women who'd swallowed the poison Nishida had pushed on them, of Omi's classmate who'd only wanted to be pretty and had paid for it with her life…

And for a moment it had all seemed possible but, before Youji could take more than a step toward their cornered prey, the balance of power shifted again.

* * *

><p>There were no two ways about it: it was well past time to end this.<p>

The meeting had been good for nothing. Another ridiculous waste of time, half an hour in the car at the end of another busy day just to stand seething in a dilapidated office while Andou hectored him as if he were a college professor and Kasamatsu an underperforming undergrad. Well, no more, Kasamatsu told himself as he hurried down the empty, echoing corridors, past the windblown garden and toward the overgrown lot where he'd left his car. Another hour or so and he'd be home – home for good, he promised himself. No more hours wasted in this rotting carcass of a building; no more dour, uncompromising Nishida or Watanuki smirking at her elbow; no more Morimasa Andou.

He'd tried to reason with Andou; Andou hadn't listened. Too caught up in his little science project. Serve the Professor right if he _did_ start freezing him out. Maybe then the stubborn old fool would understand that when Kasamatsu had told him he wanted out, he had meant every word.

The police were taking an interest, the news weeklies were catching on. Business was suffering, the stakeholders were getting restless; his wife was distant and resentful, convinced the string of late nights and the lame excuses that followed them were signs of an affair; he'd caught Akari with a box of Andou's goddamn poison pills and what the Hell had he been supposed to _say_ to her? She was thirteen years old, for crying out loud, she shouldn't even be _thinking_ about things like that yet! And then there'd been those men a day or so back…

No, it couldn't go on. _Had to end this._ Finish it and move on before the signs got even worse.

It was perhaps all the more disheartening because Andou had been a friend. Not a good friend, admittedly; they'd been close as students, the professor had even been a guest at his wedding, but in middle age they'd drifted apart. He hadn't heard from Andou in over ten years when the professor approached him with the proposition.

Money he had, but it hadn't really been money that Andou was offering. Simply, Kasamatsu had been bored.

And now? Now he was bored again, bored and compromised and all Andou had to give him was _the experiment must go on_. Something about needing more data or a change in the formula—

To Hell with the damned experiment! What about his company? What about all the business he'd had to turn down, all of it totally legitimate, all for the sake of Andou and his poison pills? Wasn't even like the old bastard was paying him properly for all the time and trouble he was taking. He'd taken the loss and sucked it up but how much longer was he supposed to all but pay Andou for the privilege of getting Charme onto the shelves? What, Kasamatsu was thinking, about my goddamn _daughter_?

If Kasamatsu had even heard the footfalls behind him, saw a shadow playing on a wall where no shadow should have fallen, he might easily have told himself that it was Andou – Andou or, worse, Watanuki, come to try and charm him back onside. Well they could try all they wanted: Kasamatsu had seen quite enough of Andou's particular brand of charm to last him a lifetime. The deal, he told himself as he pushed open the verdigrised laboratory doors, was off.

* * *

><p>Which was about where Omi came in, of course.<p>

The mission had been a quiet one so far, at least for him. If the spot Omi had found himself – the second-floor balcony of an outbuilding, hidden almost completely in welcoming shadow – hadn't been quite the perfect vantage point, the sightlines were good enough and the view of the front of the building clear enough that it made no odds. Objective: watch the doors. Maybe the others would take down the targets inside, maybe they wouldn't – and that, of course, was about where Omi came in.

There wasn't much for him to see. Just the decaying laboratory – apparently, from where he was standing, entirely cold and dead: little more than another abandoned building nobody had quite gotten around to pulling down yet – with Kasamatsu's sleek black car parked untidily out front. These targets hardly seemed the sort to try to flee on foot, and with their only vehicle safely where he could see it Weiss had their escape routes pretty cleanly cut off. Crossbow in hand, wide blue eyes scanning the building focused and tireless as a camera, Omi waited. Maybe waiting for nothing, but that was no reason to drop his guard.

Exactly what he was doing when someone, walking that one bit too quickly to be casual, pushed open the laboratory doors. Gazing, all deadly focus, at the front of the laboratory, crossbow leveled and waiting only for an opening.

Grey suit. Salt-and-pepper hair. Dark skin bleached a sickly shade by the overhead lights. _Target—_

And the click of the trigger, and the snap of the bowstring.

Kasamatsu hadn't even had time to lift his hand from the door. One second, perhaps two, and the target's knees were buckling as he pitched forward onto his face and collapsed into a crumpled heap by the doors, one hand still stretched above him as if to reach for the handle. He died without so much as a cry.

A dart springing to his fingers so sudden he could have palmed it, Omi watched for a moment longer before jumping from the balcony. Landing near-silently, the boy slipped quick and quiet from shadow to shadow as he darted across the yard to the fallen man's side. An entirely needless precaution: Omi could tell at a glance that his aim had been true. Pierced clean through the heart, Kasamatsu had been dead before his body had finished falling. Probably never even knew what hit him.

Footfalls. Leaving Kasamatsu where he lay, Omi slipped quick and neat back into the shadows, the dart poised and readied for a throw: he stepped cautiously back out again when he caught sight of Aya, sword in hand. He smiled.

"Is everything all right, Aya-kun?"  
>Aya nodded. He didn't return the smile, but then he wouldn't have done if they'd been standing in the shop. "Andou's dead."<br>"Good," Omi said, tucking the dart back in its case. Then, "I think maybe we should hide this one. Someone might see him from the street… I suppose it can't be helped about the car."

Aya nodded again. Acknowledging the sense in it, or maybe simply acknowledging that he'd heard. Bending to the dead man Aya caught him beneath the arms, dragging the corpse back into the laboratory while Omi, eyes on the street, stood lookout. Kasamatsu had bled a little, onto the front of his shirt, but when Aya returned less than a minute later there was nothing to suggest the body had ever been there.

"Where did you leave him?"  
>"Behind the reception desk," Aya replied.<br>Well, it couldn't be helped; the car was right there. The laboratory would be the first place they searched whatever happened. Scrubbing at the concrete with the toe of one sneakered foot (he didn't _think _there was a drag mark, but it never hurt to be sure) Omi asked, "And the others?"  
>"Still in the laboratories." At least, the redhead's expression suggested, I haven't seen anything to suggest otherwise.<p>

Still? Omi blinked, raising his head. Well… he supposed it was a pretty large laboratory for just four people, and Weiss hadn't been here _that _long. Maybe Youji and Ken had run into a bit more trouble actually _finding_ their targets than Aya had looking for Andou. Shivering slightly – they were pretty close to the bay out here and it was, after all, a windy night – Omi pulled his flimsy jackets more tightly about his body, glancing around and half-hoping in spite of himself that he'd see one of the others picking his way across the lot to join them. It didn't work like that, of course. It never had.

"Well," he said aloud, "they'll probably be done soon, right, Aya-kun?"

Privately he added, _five minutes and we're going back in_.

Two minutes dragged past, then a third; Omi shifted from foot to foot, squinting into the shadows. What in the world was keeping the others? They'd have called in if they'd come up against anything _really_ bad, wouldn't they? Of course they would. Or Youji would have, if he got the chance to. Maybe they really _had _justhad trouble finding the target…

The cough of a car engine spluttering into reluctant life, too close at hand to be explained away as nothing, cut across his thoughts. What in the—

Omi's head snapped round. He stared wide-eyed at Kasamatsu's black sedan, stood empty and silent as before, then over his shoulder in the direction the noise had come. There'd been another car? But I didn't even _see it_! By his side, he felt Aya tense, one hand going for the hilt of his katana; the redhead didn't move. He didn't even try to. A door slammed, the car pulled away, tires squealing as it accelerated away from the laboratory; for a moment all Omi could seem to make himself think was _oh, no_.

"Aya-kun," he heard himself say, "you said the target was dead…"  
>"He is," Aya replied, his voice tight.<p>

And knowing that told them nothing, and got them nowhere at all.


	5. Verloren: Unfinished business

**Prüfung**  
><em>earth, after rain<em>

A _Weiss Kreuz_ fanfic by laila

* * *

><p><strong>Part 4 – Verloren: Unfinished business<strong>

They wore black.

They were a unit, the strangers, they were two halves of a harmonious whole. Stood side-by-side at the top of a short flight of metal stairs leading to an emergency door, their very different faces identical twins for cool, even studied indifference, they were the kind of men who elevated anonymity to an art form. Though they looked nothing alike – the one dark and thin-faced, not much more than thirty; the other a foreigner several years his senior, blue-eyed and fair-haired as a storybook American – they were the same. Men like that were always tall, always broad in the shoulders and sturdy; they always wore black.

Bodyguards, Ken thought: some things just went without saying. But whose bodyguards and what the Hell were they doing in this shithole of a building? Not that he was in any position to ask them anything, these blank-faced strangers with their suits and their close-cut hair, and the guns that made Watanuki's .22 look like the toy it so nearly was.

"Good timing."

Nishida. Cool as ever and smiling – smiling a tight, smug little smile as if he was doing no more than point a finger at her. His finger tightened about the trigger of the gun, his eyes narrowed: if it hadn't been for the guys on the stairs he'd have shot her then and there.

"I believe you could say that," the foreigner said: his accent was strong, and he picked his words with the pedantic care of a man speaking a language he still didn't quite understand. He nodded at the woman then, turning to Youji and Ken, he added, "You should stand still, please."  
><em>Please<em>? Ken bridled. What was with this guy's attitude? "What the Hell do you think you're doing?"  
>"We are here for the Doctor."<br>"That's a coincidence," Youji said, pushing his sunglasses back up his nose. "But I'm afraid we saw her first…"  
>"Please," The foreigner said, "we mean no unpleasantness. We merely wish to take the Doctor. Could you put down that small gun please, boy?"<p>

For a moment Ken simply stood, gripping the pistol so tightly his fingers ached, his palms damp against the grip. The little .22 might have been enough gun for him if he concentrated and his luck held, but the strangers' .38s would have been more than enough for them even if they hadn't been holding them like they knew exactly what to do with them. Whoever'd given them those things hadn't want anyone even _thinking_ it, but Ken was thinking it all the same. He could take the foreigner if he aimed for the eye and the gun didn't misfire; he wouldn't be able to take them both whatever he did. Wouldn't even come close with this thing. He might as well shoot Youji then shove the gun under his jaw as try anything with these guys…

"Ken," Youji murmured, and it was a warning.

It was a bad trade. The worst. If it had just been him then maybe, but there was Youji, too— Gritting his teeth, hissing a curse, Ken lowered the gun. Flicking the safety on he placed it carefully down on the floor, then kicked it behind him. At least Nishida wouldn't get it, where it had gone. What was there to do next but straighten, hands loose by his sides and his fingers curling into fists, and gaze up at the strangers on the staircase from beneath lowered brows and tangled bangs, and wait for whatever happened next to happen?

"Thank you," the foreigner said. "That wasn't so very difficult, was it?"  
>Ken simply glared at the man, not trusting himself to speak; from somewhere beside him, Youji laughed dryly. "You could say that."<br>"Doctor." The dark one broke his silence and his voice, perfectly level and deeper than Ken had been expecting, was like a surprise. "This way."

Nishida nodded briskly, snatching a pile of disks and folders and papers from the desk and hurrying up the stairs clutching them to her chest. The two men stepped aside as she darted up the fire stairs two at a time, hesitating by the door to give her would-be murderers one last, flat stare. The Japanese bodyguard looked down at her and nodded, placing one hand on her shoulder as he hurried her back out the door; the blond kept them covered as the night swallowed their last target whole.

Ken was reckless, but he wasn't stupid. He might have snatched for the gun, put a bullet in Nishida's back, except he knew he'd never reach it. This smirking foreign bastard would shoot him dead on the spot for even daring to think it, and then he'd kill Youji, too...

That didn't mean he was going to stay quiet. "Where are you taking her?"  
>"Somewhere she'll be safe," the foreigner said. Where you people won't find her – he didn't need to add that. Some things went without saying.<br>"Safe?" Youji echoed. "A woman like that, and you want her _safe_?"  
>"But of course we do. Verwandlung—" the German word rolled off his tongue, far more smoothly than his Japanese had done, "—believes in protecting its investments."<br>"Who?" Ken couldn't keep the question back. "Who the hell are Ver… _those_ guys?"  
>The man smiled again, and it looked wrong. Quite a smiler, this foreigner with his too-wide eyes and his shock of pale hair, and his smiles would always look wrong. "Never you mind."<p>

And that, it seemed, was that.

* * *

><p>Verwandlung was German for Metamorphosis: that was all Omi had been able to offer them. A German called Franz Kafka wrote a book called <em>die<em> _Verwandlung_ once, about a man who turned into an insect, which Omi supposed was interesting enough but wasn't very helpful…

"Why does he turn into a beetle?" Ken asked.  
>"I don't know, Ken-kun. Probably it's some kind of metaphor…"<br>Ken blinked. "Well, what's the point? It's stupid. The whole thing's just plain dumb."

Aside from that it meant nothing at all, and _that_ meant Nishida was gone.

It worried Omi. It worried him a lot more than he would have liked to admit. He'd struggled with the mission report even as he tried for his teammates' sake to put the best spin on how it had gone as he possibly could, and submitted it shamefacedly. All he felt, when Manx reported back that Kritiker were satisfied that Charme was no longer a danger with its creator and distributor eliminated and they were counting the mission as a success, was guilty and slightly sick. He'd cheated on an assignment and the teacher had been right all along: sure, he'd gotten away with it, but he'd still cheated himself.

True, she hadn't been the main target. He himself hadn't so much as laid eyes on her. But knowing that Kritiker had marked Nishida for death and Weiss had failed to deliver still left Omi feeling profoundly uneasy even before anyone so much as mentioned Verwandlung.

It was no comfort at all to know he wasn't the only one who was feeling it. Youji, sat propped up behind the register idly toying with a flower, looked more pensive than languid; Aya, even more than usual, kept his distance. Ken? Ken was thinking too hard with the end result being an entirely uncharacteristic display of physical awkwardness. They were all puzzled, all guilty, with the difference being only in the proportions of one to another. Omi felt predominantly guilty. It had been his mission and therefore his mistake. If he'd just gone to check up on the others a little sooner…

And that brought him back to Verwandlung, and who or what were they? What did they want with his target?

"Omi." Ken waved one hand in front of his face. "Hey. You're spacing."  
>"Oh… Sorry, Ken-kun."<br>"Don't be sorry," Ken said, "just don't do it in the middle of the damn shop or someone's gonna walk into you!"

From the look on Ken's face, that _someone_ had very nearly been him and it was no hypothetical at all. Omi very nearly apologized again, but Ken saved him the trouble by walking away, catching his hip on the side of the table as he went. Omi winced, partly in sympathy, partly at… well, he just wished Ken wouldn't curse like that in the store, that was all.

"I'm going for a cigarette," Youji announced.

Omi merely nodded. It hardly seemed worth pointing out to Youji that he'd only gotten back from a smoke break a half-hour ago.

Youji left. Ken came back, still muttering under his breath, carrying a roll of wrapping paper. Aya, his back to the body of the shop, was busying himself tending to a shelf-full of miniature roses and Omi, finding himself a seat at the central table (this counts as out the way, right, Ken-kun?) joined a couple of whispering schoolgirls in watching him work for a moment. Aya, he knew, was no happier about what had happened on the mission than the rest of them. He was just better at not letting it show. Whatever that meant, Omi still couldn't help wishing he was more like that.

"You look blue."

Omi started. Man, that made him jump! Thank goodness he hadn't been holding anything or he'd have been looking at five minutes on his hands and knees sweeping potting compost out of the cracks between the tiles. He scrambled to his feet, schooling a polite shopkeeper's smile onto his face.

"Ah, sorry, sorry! I guess I didn't see you there, can I…"

He'd been going somewhere with that. He had to have been. Omi just couldn't remember where, that was all. He was looking at a girl of about his own age, a girl with pale skin and a head of blue-black curls, with a playful, almost teasing smile on her lips and if it wasn't exactly like looking at Ouka then it was close, it was very, very damn close. Oh, there were false notes – a red-and-black uniform; pale blue eyes; the harsh Osaka twang to her voice – but to Omi they were nothing. They weren't even there.

Thankfully, she didn't seem to have noticed his expression. That or she just didn't care. "Did you guys argue?" she was asking. "My friends said you were all acting kinda off so I figured I'd come see what was up. That's them over there, they're the ones dying of embarrassment." She grinned, pointing to a couple of girls stood by the door gazing straight at them and whispering furiously.

"Huh?" Omi blinked. Chased the smile back from wherever it had gotten off too. "Oh… no, it's nothing like that. We're all just kind of tired today, so please tell your friends not to worry."  
>"Really?" The girl frowned. "You all get tired at the same time? That's kinda weird… oh, hang on a sec." She turned, waving to the girls by the door. Called, "See? I told you it was nothing!"<br>Omi smiled, and at least the smile was genuine. "It's really not that interesting," he said easily. "We were up late last night stock-taking, and it always takes longer than you think it will."  
>"I suppose it must be tiring, running a shop?"<br>"Well, it can be. But there are plenty of worse jobs. Forgive me for not asking this sooner, but is there anything I can help you with?"  
>"Help me?" The girl blinked, then giggled. "Oh, you mean the flowers? Oh, man, I… this is kinda embarrassing, but my friends bought me here. See, I just moved here… so they said they had to bring me here. You know I don't think they were planning on buying <em>any<em>thing but I feel pretty bad, you know? I mean, this _is_ a shop… and here we are hanging out like we're at the _park_ or something!"  
>It did sound pretty funny, put like that. "I have an idea," Omi said with a smile. "I could fix you something simple. That won't be too expensive, and you don't have to feel bad."<br>"Really? That's a great idea!" The girl said with a grin. "And I'll make them buy me cake afterward, to pay me back. So, Mr. Shopkeeper, what do you recommend?"  
>"Well, let's see…"<p>

Omi led the girl over to a range of plastic pots containing cut flowers, guiding her attention toward a selection of carnations – red, yellow, peach, white and pink, their fragile petals tipped with only the slightest hint of color or bright as the hues of a child's paint box. For a moment the girl seemed to hesitate, then she broke out in that infectious grin again as she spotted the red ones, carefully drawing a bunch from the water.

"How about these?"  
>"Those?" Omi asked. "You must really like red."<br>"It's been my favorite color since I was little," the girl said. Lowering her head she sniffed at the carnations, only to look up again in disappointment. "Oh. They don't smell of anything."  
>"If you'd prefer scented flowers—"<br>"It's fine!" Snatching another bouquet from the pot, she thrust the flowers at him, the bottom of their stems dripping and dark with water. "These'll be great. Oh, you don't have any of that white stuff, do you?" White stuff? Omi's confusion must have shown on his face, because the girl huffed in exasperation. "You know, those flowers! People put them with carnations. They're like these tiny little cottony things. White stuff."  
>"You mean gypsophila?" Omi asked, glancing toward a pot full of sprays of the tiny powder-puff flowers. "We've got plenty of gypsophila, if you'd like it…"<br>The girl followed his gaze; she nodded. "That's the stuff. Can you do something pretty with that?"

Of course he could. Picking up a few sprays of gypsophila, Omi headed back over to the central table to make up the bouquet, the girl following him from a discreet distance. Maybe it was just his imagination, but there seemed to be something… well, something a little strangein the way that she was looking at him. No, not just looking at him: in the entire way she'd been. Girls – at least the ones who chose to spend their evenings hanging out in the _Koneko_ – simply weren't like this one was. There was something different about her, something he wasn't entirely sure he trusted.

Something he trusted even less, as soon as she started speaking again.

"You guys aren't here every day, are you?"  
>Omi looked up from wrapping the flowers, his hands stilling on the stalks. Yes, there was definitely something strange about this girl. She was entirely too observant. "Well," he said carefully, "actually I'm still a high-school student, so I only really work evenings and weekends…"<br>"I mean all of you," the girl said, her pale eyes fixed intently on his face. "My friends said it's unusual for you all to just be here like this. Do you guys have other jobs?"

Other jobs? What kind of a question was that? Omi hesitated for a second, just that, sorting through the possible answers; Ken, stood nearby, looked quickly over at them then just as quickly turned away again. He must have caught at least part of that. He must have been hoping he'd heard it wrong.

"Oh, no," Omi said. "It's nothing like that. The job just takes us away from the shop every so often. We run our own deliveries and we do events… and then there's breaks and days off and things like that to take into account. It's only when it gets busy they really need all four of us here."  
>"Huh. I guess I didn't think of that. What kind of stuff do you do?"<br>"Well, weddings for one," Omi said, looking up briefly from the flowers and flashing her the smile again. "Or formal dinners… sometimes we do things like big parties, too. Would you like ribbon?"  
>"Just paper's fine."<p>

And she smiled back, but now that Omi thought about it perhaps there was something a little odd about that, too.

She didn't linger over paying for the flowers. Omi watched as, giving him a cheerful farewell, the girl hurried back over to her friends, thrusting the bouquet into one of the girls' arms; he watched as the little group drifted back out into the streets and lost themselves in the early-evening crowds. He wondered if she'd come back, and almost hoped she wouldn't. Whatever was so strange about her it was nothing he could put his finger on – who knew, maybe she was just an observant girl. It didn't feel like that was the answer, though. Something about her was just… it was _off_.

"What is it with us and weird women?" Ken asked. He must have been watching the girl leave too, hands on his hips, brows lowered. "She was…" He hesitated, groping for a word; found only a disconcertingly inadequate one. "_Strange_."  
>"Like the girl from the other day," Omi said. "Don't you think?"<br>"Moth. Yeah. Why do we never meet anyone normal, that's what I want to know." Shaking his head, he wandered over to the cut flowers, rearranging the red carnations in an attempt to mask the gap the girl had left.

"You were right, Ken-kun."

Omi hadn't meant to be overheard. He'd spoken to the countertop, and quietly enough that his friend could easily have ignored it: when Ken raised his head from the flowers he was fussing over to gaze at him over one shoulder, his dark eyes frankly curious, it was a surprise.

"Right?" Ken asked. "What was I _right_ about, Omi?"  
>"She wasn't like Ouka at all."<p>

* * *

><p>"We are truly ashamed and sorry for the terrible events of the last few weeks."<p>

The President had written the speech. Such times – or so Yamanouchi had it – were times for a CEO to step forward and take responsibility: even more importantly to be _seen _to do so, to take decisive action in the face of a scandal. Now was not the moment to cower in the shadows and hope that it all blew over.

This wasn't going to blow over.

No, Yamanouchi had said firmly to the members of the board, to the Chief Science Officer and the Vice President and the PR men. No, gentlemen, thank you. I'll brief the press myself—

"Last night I was informed by the directors that a batch of one of our newest products, the slimming aid _Charme_ which has been on market trial in the Tokyo area, had been tampered with before it reached the shelves. The tampering, which the police believe to be the work of the late Professor Morimasa Andou, resulted in the illness, and in some cases in the deaths, of dozens of innocent women and girls. Words cannot express how shocked and appalled we all were to learn of Professor Andou's actions, and how truly we are sorry for the pain and suffering they have caused."

Even then it had felt like a brave thing to want to do: walking into the lecture theater they'd chosen to hold the press conference in, it seemed to Nakayama like sheer insanity. Blame the noise, blame the press of the bodies, packed too tight for the room, the mingled, sickly scents of perfumes and aftershaves and sweat. Blame Andou for dying like that and the people of Tokyo for clamoring for details about how a missing scientist should have come to be murdered by a faceless maniac with a sword in an abandoned laboratory, a laboratory full of boxes of one of their drugs.

There was no doubt about it: the business with Andou and Charme was going to come out somehow. The only thing left to do was run damage control. They could tell the truth, or half of it, and hope it would be good enough that nobody – no grieving relatives or too-curious reporters out to make names for themselves – tried to look any deeper. Nobody credible, at any rate: the kooks would think what they liked, but then they always did.

Brave or not, it was the only option Yamanouchi had left.

"We know there is nothing that we can do to reverse the terrible cost of the Professor's misdeeds, but we assure you, our customers and stakeholders, that Tellus Pharmaceuticals will do everything within our power to help in this difficult time. All products that may have been effected will be withdrawn from sale pending an independent review, and will not be returned to sale until such time as they are conclusively proven safe. We will be introducing new tamper-proof packaging for all our products, and are in the process of negotiating with our distributors to ensure they can never fall into the hands of those who would misuse them again. We are also setting in motion a stringent internal review to determine if any of our own employees may have abetted Andou. Tellus Pharmaceuticals intend to co-operate fully with any investigation and if anyone within the company is found to have played the smallest part in the Professor's crimes, we will see that they are punished to the full extent of the law."

So the President had written the speech, and there was Nakayama, stepping out onto the stage in Yamanouchi's wake. He dropped his head slightly, stepped back as Yamanouchi strode to the podium. Not much, not so much that the crowd would think the President unguarded, but just enough to allow himself to slip into the background. He was simply the bodyguard, and he wasn't there at all

He'd heard the speech before, of course. In the President's office, in the tiny backstage area as Yamanouchi restlessly paced the floor and waited to be told, _it's time_. The speech was nothing, it was drizzle: Nakayama, eyes hidden behind a pair of dark glasses, restlessly scanned the room for anything that might indicate that _here was trouble_ and like it or not on some level he was expecting it. It wasn't just reporters and camera crews who were out there right now: it was the families of the victims.

All of them looking for someone to blame…

"We at Tellus take our responsibilities to our customers seriously, and we know that in allowing such a horrible thing to happen we have let you all down. We as a company must do everything within our power to ensure that such a tragedy can never occur again. Once again, we are truly sorry to those who have suffered as a result of our failings, and to their families and friends. We would urge all of you who have been effected by these horrifying events to contact us so that Tellus Pharmaceuticals can provide you with the support and assistance you require, and determine how best to compensate you for your losses."

Well, it wasn't going to be Yamanouchi and Tellus. Dead men were convenient that way. Alive, the Professor had been a useful ally. Well, he could be useful one more time.

And there was President Yamanouchi – hands grasping the sides of the lectern, head slightly lowered, as if in discomfiture or shame – stood before a thicket of microphones, in the middle of a fusillade of popping flashbulbs, and saying all the right things. It was a masterful performance really. Told like this, Nakayama thought, it could almost have been true after all…

"Ever since our company was founded, all of us here at Tellus have prided ourselves in providing safe and effective products to people in need. Last night I learned how very badly we had failed in that aim. Nothing is more important to us than regaining the trust of you, our valued customers. We know that such a thing will take time, and will not be given so readily again. But we hope you will give us the opportunity, in future, to provide once again the top-quality products that you expect and deserve. Thank you."

It sounded wonderful. It would change nothing.

The project would continue as planned.

* * *

><p>Okay, so a target had vanished. If there was more to it than that, Ken was sure someone would tell him. For his own part he decided, after thinking it over, not to worry about it. If Nishida was still dangerous she'd show up again sooner or later and Weiss could finish what they started. If she wasn't, they'd never hear from her again. Either way it wasn't worth losing sleep over, though of course that hadn't stopped Omi for a moment even before Manx had mentioned – strongly implying that they should do likewise – that Kritiker were going to be looking into that Ver… the group with the funny name.<p>

"Omi? What's up?"

He'd thought the shop floor was looking kind of empty. Just over an hour to close and, leaving Youji propping up the counter (she was a blonde this time), Ken had gone to find the broom because anything he didn't have to do after they closed up was good with him and it wasn't like there was anything else to do. What he'd got was Omi in the break room bent intently over a notebook. The weird thing was that it didn't seem to have anything written on it.

"Oh, uh… it's nothing really, Ken-kun. I was just… well, you know what happened last week."  
>"Again?" Ken sighed. "Hey, <em>Omi<em>, come on. Either she shows up again or she doesn't and if she don't… well, for all we know she ain't even in the country anymore. I wouldn't be. The— well, it's done, right?"  
>"Maybe not, Ken."<p>

Aya. Separating himself from the break room wall, uncrossing his arms from his chest, Aya walked over to the table, stubbing out a half-smoked cigarette in the ashtray. Amazing how inconspicuous a tall redhead in a ridiculous sweater and a bright green apron could make himself if he wanted to, really.

"Huh? What'd you mean?"  
>"You know, Ken-kun," Omi said, "I was just talking with Aya-kun and we think… well, there've been a lot of rather odd things happening lately, haven't there? The mission, this <em>Verwandlung<em> group, what happened to Sayu-san… maybe even that girl you met. Well, what if they're all connected?"  
>"Connected?" Ken echoed. He must have blinked. "That's reaching a bit, don't you think?"<br>Omi shook his head. He tapped the pen on the edge of his notepad. "Maybe not," he said, and he had that look on his face again, the one that said he'd been thinking things. Ken wondered if anyone had told the kid this wasn't actually a mission. "It wouldn't be that odd if a lot of little things happening together all turned out to be part of the same big thing, right, Aya-kun?"

Aya might have nodded, but probably hadn't. Ken didn't bother turning to check. He was far too busy staring at Omi and wondering, am I the _only_ person here who thinks this sounds totally nuts?

"And then what?" He asked. "We've got a mad scientist with a load of Ebola pills, some group of whackos with a name nobody can say, and a girl with dehydration. That don't add up to di— and a drug company, right. You think you can get something out of all that good luck trying, but you're on your own."  
>Fill in the comeback yourself, I guess. Sure Omi wasn't going to say anything, but Ken had a horrible feeling he was thinking it. Whoops, probably time to make himself scarce.<p>

Except now _he_ was thinking it too, wasn't he? The problem with thoughts like that was they were horribly contagious. There Ken was in the shop de-thorning roses because God knew Youji wasn't about to risk his fingers doing it and dammit but he'd caught himself wondering if maybe Omi was right after all. There really _was_ a lot of weirdness going round, and what were the chances that it was going to stop dead just because Professor Andou was out of the picture? Sure, the drug company guys had said they didn't know anything about what he'd been up to with their pills but that was exactly what Ken would have said in that situation, if he'd been a bit of a bastard—

"Hey. Wake _up_, Hidaka."

Youji. Ken started as the blond snapped his fingers in front of his face. He dropped the rose, the knife slipped: he flinched, hissing in sudden pain. Great, so he'd wrecked a perfectly decent pair of gardening gloves and now his hand was bleeding. Did it matter that he'd been hurt far worse than this before? It goddamn well _hurt_! Ken raised his head, gave Youji the nastiest look he could scare up on a moment's notice. Nothing was worth this.

"_Ow_! Dammit Youji look what you made me do!"  
>"What did I make you do?" Youji asked, raising his eyebrows in surprise as Ken stripped off his glove, cursing under his breath. "Oh, for… Don't tell me you've cut yourself? How in the world did you manage that?"<br>"What'd you mean," Ken retorted, "how'd _I_ do that? I was doing just fine before you came along!"  
>Youji sighed. Shook his head. "Ken, it's not my fault you're an accident waiting to happen. Why aren't you using a rose stripper?"<br>"Because _someone _put the goddamn rose stripper _down somewhere_ and it wasn't me, what'd you want Youji and it'd better be good."  
>"It's good," Youji said. He smiled, gesturing down the road, and Ken followed his gaze, trying to work out what he was looking at. "Look. Those two girls over there—"<br>"That's it? You've seen a girl?" You made me slice open my hand over _that_? Ken spared Youji an aggrieved, turning back to the arrangement and sucking on his cut. Ow. "You—" he began, then lifted his hand away and tried again. "Hey. If you're not gonna work, Kudou, you could at least let medosome. And if you're just gonna stand round staring at girls, get me a plaster!"  
>"Say please," Youji said, grinning infuriatingly, "and I'll consider it, Kenken."<br>"Stop calling me that!"  
>Youji clicked his tongue, chidingly. "Temper, temper. If you'll only let me finish, all will be revealed. As I was about to say, take a look at those two girls across the road. See the tall one? Now, I could be wrong about this—" except of course I'm not, "—but she looks exactly like Moth."<p>

Moth?

Dammit, he shouldn't have been interested. He should have told Youji to shove it and gotten back to the arrangement he was neglecting but, a frown on his face, Ken looked round almost in spite of himself. Now that he thought about it there were two girls, one short and dark, the other taller and fairer and weirdly familiar, deep in angry conversation as they waited at a crosswalk. All right, so Youji'd found some women, now who the Hell was—oh, of course. _That_ Moth. The girl with the sore feet who wouldn't let them call her an ambulance.

And there he'd been thinking Youji's talent for identifying women by their figures was just the world's most useless superpower.

"It looks like her," he said finally. Then, "What the Hell's she doing here? I thought she lived in Oshiage."  
>"<em>I<em> thought," Youji said quietly, "she'd been taking Charme."  
>And what was... wait, Charme'd been the name of that drug. (Oi, Youji, why am I supposed to have all these names straight?) Now that he thought about it Ken guessed he'd been assuming that too, what with her being a girl and ill and two and two equaling four. Only trouble with that: it was all just a bit too neat. He frowned again, this time simply in thought. "Maybe she got better?"<br>"You don't get better from things like that, Ken."  
>"Then she can't have been taking it," Ken said, dabbing at his cut hand with a torn delivery receipt he had found in his pocket – dammit, really should start carrying tissues or something – then wondered why Youji was looking at him like that. "What?"<br>"You know," Youji said, "maybe you're smarter than you look..."  
>"Maybe we could ask her. She's headed this way."<br>And Youji laughed, shaking his head as if he couldn't believe his ears. "No, forget I spoke. You're not."  
>"What the Hell's that supposed to mean?"<br>"Ken," Youji said, pushing a stray curl back behind one ear, a gesture as practiced as it was entirely pointless, "a bit of friendly advice. Never, _ever_ ask a woman if she's been dieting. If she brings it up she's after a compliment and that's your cue to tell her she looks great, but if she doesn't, _don't mention it_."  
>Well, he supposed that sounded sensible enough. Girls did get weird about stuff like that. "Okay," Ken said. "Why not?"<br>"Because," Youji said with a grin, "you want to lose your virginity sometime before you're forty."

What. For a moment Ken simply stared at Youji, unable to quite believe he'd heard him right. _What the_—he did not just say that, did he? And in the shop of all places oh Christ what if someone had heardhim. Ground, swallow me up and Mary mother of God _please_ tell me I'm not blushing...

"Oh, shut up, Youji!"

It's time I saw to that cut.

* * *

><p>Why was it that, given the choice between watching a brace of pretty girls and watching Ken, his injured hand cradled to his chest, hurry into the stockroom as if he'd just realized something was on fire out there, Youji had chosen to watch Ken? Go figure that. Youji couldn't, but it wasn't until the door banged shut behind Ken that he turned back to the road.<p>

If he had been feeling uncharitable, Youji would have said Ken just didn't want to deal with the girls. (Or him. It could always have been him Ken didn't want to deal with.) The boy had been right; they were headed this way. The tall one, the girl with the auburn hair, seemed to have won the argument: as he watched she darted across the crosswalk, her head turning this way and that at the waiting traffic as she ran. Her friend hung back for a moment then, walking slowly, she followed, breaking into a nervous trot as the green man started to flash.

An odd pair, these two – the tall girl moving like she was being chased, walking with quick, anxious strides, her long auburn hair falling across her cheeks as she glanced about herself as if she were searching for invisible enemies; her friend, a battered satchel slung over one shoulder and her arms full of books, walking slowly, head bowed.

"Where's Ken?"

Aya. Wait, what the Hell? Youji's head snapped up, he glanced back at the redhead over one shoulder, half-expecting to see him reappearing in the middle of a puff of smoke. When had _he_ come back?

"You," he said definitely, "need to learn to make more noise."  
>Aya ignored that, but then of course he did. "Where is Ken?"<br>"Out back," Youji said: simplest way to shut Aya up was to give him what he wanted. "Did something stupid and hurt himself but what else is new. I'd finish it up for him—" Or not, but who cared, "—but you know what Ken's like, he'd only say I'd done it all wrong and start over…"  
>"Hello?"<p>

And Aya hadn't cared about any of that, but that didn't matter because Youji decided that he really didn't care what Aya thought right now anyway.

It was the same girl all right, the girl called Moth. Still tall, still auburn, she still spoke in the same quick, anxious half-whisper, but the rest of the pattern was all wrong and it took Youji a moment to work out why. The same girl, no doubt about it, and yet… Moth looked _well_, that was all, she looked ordinary. Ken wouldn't have given her a second glance. She was clean and neatly-dressed, her hair brushed and braided at the front; if she'd pulled her hair back and herself together, maybe he wouldn't even have recognized her…

Her friend was all nerves too, but in a different way. Where Moth was expectant she shrank into herself, an armful of dry-looking library books clasped tight to her chest and her gaze lowered. Bobbed black hair, sensible blouse buttoned almost to the neck, glasses: flinched when she felt his eyes upon her, quickly turning away to study a display case. All right, I get it: you're a type, and you're not here.

So he turned back to Moth, gave her a wide, winning smile. "Oh, hey! I almost didn't recognize you when you walked in. You're looking good."  
>"Thank you." The girl giggled awkwardly, a slight blush coming to her cheeks. "I… um, I hope I'm not disturbing…"<br>"No, no. A pretty girl like you's always a welcome sight. Don't you think, Aya?"

Aya. It had been a tease, really. A not-entirely-harmless attempt to get a rise out the guy. Youji hadn't expected to see Moth's eyes slip shyly sideward, alighting on Aya's grave profile for as long as she dared before quickly looking back up at him, the flush on her cheeks only deepening. How, Youji thought sourly, the Hell do you do it, wonderful? And it's certainly not your personality, because as far as I can tell you haven't got one.

"Oh," she said, "is that really his name? It's…"  
>"It's a long story," Youji said, raking his curls back out of his face again. "Long story short, that's what he wants us to call him. We're running with it.""But that's a girl's name," Moth said, persistent as a child: Youji raised one eyebrow, felt himself start to frown. "Why'd he want to—"<br>"Moth!" The dark girl, her voice almost pained, broke her silence. "He means it's private."  
>Moth paled, her hands flying to her mouth. "Oh! I… I'm sorry. I didn't realize…"<p>

No, Youji thought. No, obviously you didn't realize or you'd never have tried to ask about it in the first place. What the Hell, he wondered, was wrong with this woman? Sure she looked ordinary now, but looking ordinary was about where it ended. Christ, even Ken – _Ken_, the kid who'd think nothing of walking up to a pretty girl and asking if she was trying to lose weight because you could say that to a man and he wouldn't mind much, right? – knew better than that.

"It's fine," he said; he smiled, easy as anything. "You weren't to know. How've you been, anyway?"  
>If all else fails, change the subject. Moth smiled at him, gratefully. "Oh, I'm much better now, thank you. I'm living with Shizue—" the dark girl shot her a frantic look: Moth, why are you telling him my <em>name<em>? "—just until I find my feet. She's been helping me look for a job."  
>A job? "Well," Youji said, "I'm afraid we can't help you there and that's a damn shame. I'd suggest we fired Ken, you're far nicer to look at than he is, but he's the only one does any work around here so that's probably a no-go."<br>Moth flushed scarlet. "I didn't mean that, Youji-san!"

But she was looking at Aya again as she spoke, and a wistful look crept into her wide-set green eyes. Of course that hadn't been what she was asking, but wouldn't it have been wonderful if…

The stockroom door creaked open, then clicked closed as Ken slipped back out into the shop, giving the girl a brief, incurious glance; he didn't look at Youji at all but, once again, Youji realized that he was watching him. Thinking, you know, kid, maybe you're not so bad after all.

Sure she was lovely to look at, but a girl like Moth could get old fast.

* * *

><p>If you could tell nothing else about an executive from their offices, you could at least tell what they wanted you to think of them. That, Doctor Nishida supposed, would have to do.<p>

A cab ride, a smiling receptionist in a neat little uniform, an elevator and another girl stood by the controls, a girl so like the first one they could have been cast from the same mold. Going up, twenty-second floor: a slim, elegant-looking secretary sitting in a bright outer office playing at typing a letter looked up as she walked in, giving her a bright, artificial smile. Oh, yes, you're expected. I'll show you in…

"Doctor Nishida, President Yamanouchi."  
>"Ah, Doctor. At last. Have a seat."<p>

The office she had been shown into was a showpiece, a visual representation of power. There was a large, low coffee table, on top of which sat an artfully-arranged stack of books and glossy magazines which nobody ever picked up and read, and a gleaming silver coffee service out of which nobody had ever poured a cup of coffee. There were long lines of shelves groaning with more unread books; there was an oversized teak desk with a thick blotter and antique lamp, in the middle of which perched a laptop computer so slim and so sleek it looked like a toy. Nobody who worked in a place like this could possibly have been expected to do anything more than be seen to be there.

The only false note was the vase of bright red flowers stood on the coffee table. In a room as ruthlessly overdesigned as this, you expected a single lily in a tall vase, or an orchid, or a tiny bonsai tree. The carnations looked strange there, trashy and determinedly down-market – and yet somehow they were the only redeemable thing about the place.

Certainly she couldn't say as much for the office's owner. Yamanouchi had no right to this place – but if it hadn't been for Yamanouchi she wouldn't have been here at all, in more senses of the word than she liked to think of.

She sat, smoothing down her skirt; she reminded herself to look grateful. That much would be expected.

Nishida couldn't say she cared much for the President's taste in guests either. Sat before the desk, almost slouching in a low leather chair, was the lean, sallow figure of Professor Alexander Gersten. Her new boss. Of course she should have expected him to be there – why on Earth wouldn't Yamanouchi have wanted to see them both? – but she couldn't deny that an afternoon away from the pompous idiot would have been a relief.

"Thank you, President Yamanouchi. It's a pleasure to be here."  
>Yamanouchi's lips quirked upward into an entirely meaningless smile. "And how are you settling in?"<br>"Very well." Nishida said: she snuck a quick glance at Gersten out of the corner of one eye. He wasn't even bothering to conceal his disdain. He didn't like her; didn't want her help, either, and would never have accepted it if Yamanouchi hadn't presented him with a _fait accompli_. Here she is, Professor, like it or not. I recommend you learn to like it. The old fool! As if she would have chosen _him_, given her head. "The Professor has been very kind to me."  
>"I'm sure he has," Yamanouchi said with a smile, reaching for a cigarette case on the desk. "And I hope, Doctor, that you will find the atmosphere we're offering you here far more to your taste than the ghastly setting Andou was keeping you in. Professor Gersten—" This with a nod in Gersten's direction, a nod and a knife-edge of a smile "—will see to it that you have everything you need, of course…"<br>Gersten stirred in his chair, coming alive at the President's words. "I hope, President Yamanouchi," he said forcefully, "that you are not implying I would fail in my responsibilities to… to Doctor Nishida? Whatever my feelings about her appointment…"  
>"Water under the bridge, I trust," Yamanouchi said smoothly, lighting the cigarette: the sharp <em>click<em> of the lighter served to underscore the words. "You are, of course, both professionals."  
>"Naturally," Gersten said, voice tight. "And you may rest assured, President, that the Doctor will have all the support she requires."<p>

Support: Nishida bristled, eyes narrowing as she shot Gersten a sharp, withering glare. Oh, you arrogant, puffed-up little— The _gall_ of the man, to sit there in front of the President and infer that she would need her hand held! How dare he? How dare this… this foreigner denigrate her like that when it was he who needed her?

Yamanouchi simply nodded. "I'm very glad to hear it. So, if that is everything…"  
>"Excuse me, President Yamanouchi." Nishida cleared her throat, recrossing her legs, " and forgive me for interrupting, but it isn't <em>quite<em> everything. There is one more thing that… troubles me."  
>And was gratified to see Gersten blanch. "President Yamanouchi, I must protest. The Doctor said nothing—"<br>"You needn't worry, Professor Gersten," Nishida said, giving the man a tight little smile. "It has nothing to do with you or your staff. I… well, to be entirely honest with you I wasn't planning on bringing it up like this, but I suppose it is a matter that concerns us all…"  
>"Doctor Nishida," Gersten said, "I must ask you to come to the point. The President's time is precious."<p>

_Snap_. Yamanouchi shut the cigarette box, one hand resting on the lid for a moment, gazing straight at Gersten. Thank you, Professor, but you do not need to speak for me: one way or another, Gersten got the message. He slumped into his chair, arms folded, subsisting back into aggravated silence as Yamanouchi smiled again, tight and aggressive and predatory.

"Please continue, Doctor."  
>"Thank you, President Yamanouchi. What I was meaning to say…" She hesitated. Drew a deep breath. There were fine red lines scoring her ankle; there were purpling bruises, when she looked down, on one hand where the gun had been whipped from between her fingers. "The assassins, President."<br>How silly the word sounded, silly and overdramatic as something from a film. Gersten started, leaning forward in his chair. "Assassins?"  
>Yes, Professor. Assassins. "Those men…" Nishida broke off, swallowed hard, caught off-guard by her own anger, and by something in her voice that was very close to fear. "Well, why should I presume that I'm – that <em>any<em> of us are safe here? They killed my assistant! I presume that you mean to do something about protecting us?"  
>"Calm down, please, Doctor." The President raised one hand. "The matter is in hand."<br>"_Assassins_?" Gersten said again, disbelievingly: Nishida very nearly laughed in his face. The sudden fear in his voice, the concern in his face... none of that was for her. It was all for Professor Alexander Gersten, for his own precious hide. How transparent he was. "Surely not, Doctor!"  
>Yamanouchi only nodded, face grave. "I'm afraid the Doctor is correct. Andou's team was the target of assassins, and as the sole survivor it's possible she may be targeted again. Consequently, I have decided to arrange for additional protection."<br>"Protection?" Gersten echoed. "But Nakayama and Winters—"  
>"—are my bodyguards," Yamanouchi said firmly, "and Segawa is just a girl. I agree with the Doctor, Professor Gersten. What we require are professionals – the kind of man who is used to facing down these kinds of threats. We may have been lucky up until now, but the game has changed and we can no longer presume to be operating under clear skies. Unless, that is…" The President hesitated, eyes narrowing at Gersten through a column of smoke, "… you would prefer to gamble. Are you a gambling man, Gersten?"<br>Gersten scowled. "I am a scientist."  
>Yamanouchi just nodded, drawing on the cigarette. "Then I'm sure you can see the logic."<p>

Reluctantly the professor nodded, tight-lipped; he might have said something more, but was cut off by the short, sharp _buzz _of an intercom. Leaning forward, Yamanouchi pressed a small button set into the desk, listened and nodded briskly – President Yamanouchi, Mr. Morioka from TPCS. Shall I tell him to take a seat?

"Tell him I'll be right with him, Hikaru." Yamanouchi said. "The Professor was just leaving."

Yamanouchi released the button, straightened and stood, giving the room a bright and meaningless smile that went everywhere and nowhere, and had nothing to do with either of them. Nishida stood too, and bowed deeply: you really, she was thinking, shouldn't be here. There were no two ways around it, Yamanouchi was just too young. Too damn young and too damn inexperienced, and – for all the determination that it had taken to get this far at all – too impatient by half. Nobody like this had any right to be leading a company, still less a company in crisis.

The old man would have handled it differently. Handled it better—

But if the old man had still been alive, there would have been no crisis at all.


	6. Vorzeichen: Negative image

**Prüfung**  
><em>earth, after rain<em>

A _Weiss Kreuz_ fanfic by laila

* * *

><p><strong>Part 5 – Vorzeichen: Negative image<strong>

Tokyo. Always Tokyo. Concrete, cars, crowds. Business-suited nonentities convincing themselves that the Itoi account was really worth working themselves to exhaustion over and stupid little girls in stupid little sailor suits, chattering to one another in their stupid high-pitched voices. Idiots, all of them. They weren't even worth the trouble of messing with.

If Schuldig could have chosen a place to exile himself, it would not have been Tokyo. On his list of desirable places to vegetate, Tokyo ranked only slightly higher than Kosovo and Kinshasa. The nights were as bright as midday in June; the language was so complicated even the natives couldn't speak it right; you couldn't drive anywhere in less time than it'd take to build the car, sell it for scrap, then walk it; there wasn't a single decent sausage in the entire wretched country – and yet here he was slumped on a stripy secondhand couch somewhere in Edogawa, wherever the Hell _that_ was apart from nowhere he would ever have wanted to be, waiting for the past to catch up with him.

Whatever Rosenkreuz were going to do to them it could hardly, Schuldig thought, have been worse than Edogawa. At least they'd have the grace to do it in German…

That had been the theory, anyway.

"Problem, Crawford?"

The house was Japanese, which was to say it was a matchbox. When Crawford, sat straight-backed at the table, raised his head from the letter he had been reading and sat back in his chair, of course Schuldig noticed it. He could hardly help but notice it when the American had damn near collided with the couch in the process – but that wasn't what was remarkable about it.

There was a frown tugging at Crawford's brows; his lips were slightly pursed. Disconcerted – and that, from a man who could watch a bomb go off across the street with nothing more than an amused smirk, was disconcerting in itself. Crawford was a chessmaster who played games with Chance and Fate; he knew all the rules and was never anything less than three moves ahead, and was not above judiciously cheating if it helped him keep his lead. A man like that had no right to be caught off-guard.

"I wouldn't go that far," Crawford said in exasperatingly accentless German. "Let's say there's been a development."  
>At least he didn't sound surprised: Schuldig had to give the cold-blooded bastard that. "Didn't see it coming, huh?"<br>"We've gone into this, Schuldig," Crawford said, tossing the letter to the table. "And stop that, it's irritating."

Schuldig sighed, muttering a curse. Christ, if he could get his hands on the asshole taught Crawford to shield… and there was no point thinking it because even supposing he could have done he'd have turned the man into origami years ago and that still wouldn't have solved the problem. The barrier he could have lived with; the bit where Crawford always, always knew when he was testing it? That had been just plain cruel.

"Irritating," Schuldig said vaguely. "You know, Crawford, I'd be careful how I used that word. If I were you, that is. So, level with me – this whole Edogawa thing. Slight waste of time, or gigantic waste of time?"  
>"Excuse me?"<br>Schuldig frowned. Damn, but that prim little East Coast _excuse me_ sounded stupid in German. "Just tell me if this is the kind of development where you stop to pack. If I'm gonna be running I at least want the right shoes."  
>"It's a proposition, Schuldig," Crawford said coolly. "Your choice in footwear is irrelevant."<br>"Proposition? What kind of a proposition?"  
>"A business proposition. A man called Shun Yamanouchi is in the market for bodyguards."<p>

_Bodyguards_? Didn't we just leave this party?

Turning in his seat, one arm flat against the back of the couch, Schuldig gave his companion an incredulous stare. It couldn't be a wind-up, Crawford was a humorless bastard and he didn't make jokes, but what else could this _be_? Christ, it wasn't as if they'd wantedtheTakatori assignment in the first place – they were Schwarz, not some pack of rent-a-thugs who'd be anyone's for the right price – and now here came the new boss, same as the old boss, thinking nothing of asking them to go back to playing nursemaid to some bland middle-aged Jap in an expensive suit, and not even a useful idiot this time round…

"How the Hell did he even get a hold of us?"  
>Crawford gave him a knife-edge of a smile. "I believe we have the late lamented Reiji Takatori to thank. Our would-be client is attracted by the <em>cachet<em> of employing the former Prime Minister's staff."  
>"Hah!" Schuldig shook his head. "So now he's fucking us over from beyond the grave?"<br>"Ironic, really," Crawford said mildly, "when one remembers how he got there…"

Schuldig laughed. Maybe they should tell this Yamanouchi guy about _that _small detail. See if he was still so keen on them watching his back after that!

"So," he said, "what are we going to do about it?"  
>"Do?" Crawford echoed. "Schuldig, we are going to do nothing. Our services—" He reached for the letter again, tore it clear in two, "—are not for sale."<p>

* * *

><p>Shinobu sees with his eyes closed.<p>

He had curled up in an armchair in the corner of the office, chin resting on his folded forearms, knees drawn up to his chest. He is pale as a plant left to bloom in a cupboard; he is thirteen years old; he might have been asleep. And yet he could feel them, the people in the office – he saw with his eyes closed, things came so much clearer that way.

The president, for instance, was angry. Rage, hard-repressed beneath a veneer of practiced calm: rage burning bright as flame, but buried where nobody could find it but him. Hikaru Kameda was troubled, slender body taut and alive with strain; Kameda knew the President, and could guess. Nakayama practiced calm, Winters merely bored, and if he wasn't yawning it was only because he was old enough and disciplined enough to know not to show it. And yet, if Shinobu were to open his eyes, there would be nothing to see but a roomful of people in suits, all practiced smiles and feigned attentiveness, neat and composed as figures in a photograph…

It wasn't all he could see. He saw the scientists in the complex: their feelings thrummed at the back of his mind, a tapestry of focused tedium jeweled with sudden brilliant sparks of excitement and frustration. Beneath that—

He could see them. He could always see them.

"I said they would not go for it," Winters said.

Winters's voice was perfectly level, but Shinobu could feel his satisfaction. There was something sick about it, a nasty, gloating edge that stained and tainted everything it touched. He always had been an insolent man… The soft sound of falling paper, fluttering and skidding across a tabletop: a sudden bolt of fury cut through Hikaru Kameda's anxious fluttering; the president's rage burned white-hot, and all Winters might have seen was a single raised brow.

Shinobu opened his eyes. There was Winters, stood over the President's desk, the papers he had just tossed down scattered across the blotter; there was the President, hands folded on the desktop, gazing levelly at the man.

"We remember," Shinobu said quietly. "You don't have to brag, Winters."  
>Winters started, turning to him in sudden surprise; when he spoke, it was to Yamanouchi. "For God's sake," he said, "Could you please tell the child not to do such a thing?"<br>Yamanouchi merely smiled, that burning rage lost beneath a sudden flood of satisfaction. "Whyever would I? You seem to forget, Mister Winters. That's why I keep him around."  
>"Well I wish to God you did not. Can you not tell him he is not to spy on <em>us<em>, at least?"  
>Shinobu frowned. He raised his head from his arms. "It's not spying," he said resentfully. "You might as well ask me not to look at you."<br>"Leave the boy alone, please," Yamanouchi said. "Shinobu is not important. You are all to forget that he is here. What we came here to discuss is this."

This: the letter. The letter they themselves had sent, no more than three days previous: it now lay on Yamanouchi's blotter, torn clear down the middle. The president picked one of the torn halves up careful as a scientist examining a specimen and held it up to the light, a frown tugging at the corner of the lips: the anger still burned but it had tempered itself, sheer curiosity quenching the flames.

"I must say," Yamanouchi said, turning the letter between finger and thumb, "that this was not quite as… eloquent a response as I was expecting, though in its own way I suppose it speaks volumes. There was no other note?"  
>Nakayama shook his head slightly. "No, President Yamanouchi. I would imagine this <em>Mister<em> Crawford," his lips twisted scornfully as he spoke; the Western title sounded quite ridiculous, exactly as Nakayama had hoped it would, "felt that nothing else was needed." And he sighed, and the sigh said _foreigners_ clear as a shout.  
>"Then we must raise our game, gentlemen. Every man has a price and this Mister Crawford is no exception. I intend—" Yamanouchi dropped the letter, "—to discover his."<p>

If only Shinobu had known why it mattered so much. Surely there were hundreds of men in the city Yamanouchi could have hired – thousands even. Why was Yamanouchi so set on this group? He could feel the President's certainty, the determination that Crawford and his men were the only ones who would do; the thing he could never understand was _why_…

And Nakayama frowned. The President might merely have thought him confused, but Shinobu felt the man's unease plain as if it had been his own.

"Is it wise," Nakayama said finally, "to hire a bodyguard you can't trust?"  
>Yamanouchi chuckled. "Trust? Nakayama-san, the loyalty of such men is a commodity. You know that. Our own Mister Winters is living proof of it. Crawford is no different to any of them. If he's holding out for anything, it's for a better offer. All we have to do is make him one."<br>"Forgive me, President Yamanouchi," Nakayama said quietly. "But it seems to me these men don't wish to work with us. As you said, their response is quite clear on that point. But no doubt they have their reasons, and speaking entirely professionally my inclination is to respect them. I have no doubt we can buy these men. But if you were to ask me, _should we_ – my answer would have to be no."  
>"Thank you for your opinion, Nakayama-san." Yamanouchi said coolly. "Nevertheless, I intend to have these men. I have heard rumors… this group possess certain talents, or so I've been told. If this is true and these men – I believe they call themselves Schwarz; I rather like that – if they truly are all they've been said to be, their assistance would prove invaluable. Nakayama-san, you and Mister Winters are to re-establish contact with this man Crawford. Tell him…" Yamanouchi sat back comfortably, hands behind the head, smiling at the ceiling, "… tell him we are prepared to negotiate, and that it would be wisest for him to do the same. Life can, after all, be made very uncomfortable for a foreigner in Japan. Isn't that correct, Mister Winters?"<p>

Winters bridled, but said nothing; he bowed when Nakayama did, stiffly and far too shallowly, and he was muttering to himself in English as Kameda showed them to the door. Shinobu watched them go incuriously. Sometimes, all his own gifts were good for was confirming what any fool with eyes already knew.

"Shinobu," The President with a smile, "tell me how the gentlemen were feeling."  
>"Of course, President Yamanouchi."<p>

Sometimes, Shinobu wondered how long it had been since he last knew how he felt – but that, of course, wasn't what he was there for.

* * *

><p>Monday lunchtime and the library: some day, Omi told himself, I'm just going to stop bothering bringing a lunch. All they did was sit in his bag until he got home, where he'd stick his bento in the fridge and tell himself he'd eat it later, then forget about it. Goodness knew what happened to them after that. He supposed Ken ate them. Ken ate pretty much anything if it was left unattended long enough.<p>

If he'd told Ken he'd been working on the Nishida thing instead of eating his lunch, he knew his friend would mother him a bit then ask expectantly if he'd found anything – still believing that he would, that the answer really was there for the taking and of course Omi would know exactly where to find it. And here he was staring at his laptop reading about Charme for the thousandth time for the lack of any other leads… honestly, Omi wished he had Ken's faith in his own abilities. It must have been nice, he thought a little resentfully, to trust that Omiwould handle it.

Sometimes, Omi caught himself wondering if the only reason for Ken's ever-present optimism was that he didn't really have any idea what he was talking about…

He felt guilty for so much as considering it. Omi told himself that was an unkind thing to think, and unfair too – yet that couldn't change the fact that, when he got home, Ken would still be the only one present who still thought they'd find Nishida eventually. Something'll come up, you just gotta give these things time…

Youji clearly didn't believe a word of it. Youji clearly wasn't about to take a soccer player's advice on how to conduct an investigation. After one too many days chasing down one too many blind alleys, he had come home late with his hair damp, smelling of cigarette smoke and floral shampoo, and had hung a detour into the cellar to declare the whole thing a waste of time. Call me when you find something, kiddo, but until then I'm out. Aya had lasted a little longer, but Omi knew the redhead well enough by now to know when he had lost interest in an assignment. The Andou mission was, after all, officially complete…

Maybe the others could accept that. He couldn't.

(Bless you, Ken, for at least trying to stick with it.)

Sighing, Omi sat back in his chair, rubbing at one eye with the heel of his hand, hoping against hope it might convince his incipient headache to leave him alone. Charmewasn't looking like a real word any more, not even a foreign one, and it wasn't like old lab reports would tell him where Nishida was hiding. There had to be some other place to look, some stone he hadn't turned over twenty times already…

"Omi-kun? What's that you're working on?"  
>"Oh, uh… it's nothing, Minako-san! Just something for class."<br>"Wow, do you think we'll all need to know that stuff? It looks… _really super hard_."  
>"Uh… well, I just wanted to check it, that's all."<br>"Really? That's cool, if I was gonna know all the things you do I'd have to live to be a hundred."  
>"I'm sure that's not true, Minako-san. I'm sure there's lots of things you know that I don't."<p>

Minako gave him a smile, and headed over to the library counter with her arms full of books. Quickly, Omi closed the lab report, not without a strange swelling of relief; he sat back heavily in his chair and sighed. That, he thought, was way too close. He could only thank his stars Minako hadn't really known what she was looking at.

There had to be something safer to be seen doing, didn't there? Something still-useful he could – well, not exactly _lie_ about but sort of invent an interest in, if someone asked. Even knowing that his classmates thought he was some kind of super-genius, lab reports were just too hard to explain away. Who looked at _them_ for fun? But maybe if he checked up on something else… Well, why not? It wasn't like he had been getting anywhere before, either. The only question now was what on Earth was there he could look at in a school library they hadn't checked twenty times already?

On a whim, he loaded an internet browser. On a whim, he typed in _Tellus Pharmaceuticals_, and hit search.

Net gain: one company website. It looked… well, it looked like every other company website he had ever visited, but at least if anyone looked over his shoulder he could say he was thinking about studying biochemistry. Chin propped in hand, Omi idly flipped through the pages – vision statement, about our products, press office, something about R&D and the usual link for hopeful job seekers revealing nothing more than that Tellus were currently in the market for a receptionist, two security guards and an assistant something-or-other in sales. In other words, there was nothing.

He flipped back to the homepage and from there to a page headed _What's New At Tellus?_, wondering as he did so how they were planning on presenting the whole Charme mess: of course the answer was that they weren't.

The most recent newsletter – Omi scanned it anyway, more because it was there than because he thought it would have anything much to tell him – was already some seven months old. Headed by a black-bordered picture of a dour-looking man in late middle age, it contained a lengthy obituary of the company president, who had passed away in December after a short illness. A second article tucked discreetly beneath the first talked about the accomplishments of his multitalented son Shun, a high-flying thirtysomething with an MBA from Harvard who had served as marketing director since arriving home and was now, for all his youth and inexperience, President in his father's place. An embarrassed whisper of a still-smaller article wished two former Board members all the best in their new careers.

Either it was another piece of the same puzzle or it had gotten into the box by accident. Omi wished he knew which was more likely; he wished there was someone else he could ask about it…

Ken was going to have to do.

Back at the shop Youji, all his attention on a sweet-faced grad student who'd worked herself into a charming flap over a birthday bouquet for her mother, hadn't even bothered feigning interest in the – could he even call it a development? Omi wasn't sure that didn't overstate things somewhat – the news about Yamanouchi senior's death. Aya, propping up the wall, was too busy glowering (whether over Youji's very particular take on good salesmanship, the dreamy gaze the girl they called Moth was directing at him over a display stand laden with Hello Kitty bouquets, or something rather more internal Omi hardly liked to ask) to do much more than raise a single eyebrow. It might have been vexing, but it was hardly a surprise.

Ken all but threw down his plant mister and demanded Omi show him everything. That wasn't a surprise either.

"I don't get it."

Ten minutes later and Ken was leaning heavily on the back of Omi's chair as they both looked at the same company website, the same photograph of the same grim-faced old man with its heavy border of black. Tellus Pharmaceuticals regrets to announce the death of Company President Kenshirou Yamanouchi, 60, of Nagata-cho, Chiyoda Ward, who passed away peacefully on December 12, 1997…

Ken was frowning. "What's this all about, Omi?"  
>"Well… I'm not sure," Omi admitted. "All this really says is that the company's under new management, right? It might not mean anything."<br>"But if you figured it was nothing then you wouldn't have brought it up, right?"  
>Omi smiled at the computer screen. Honestly, Ken knew him far too well. "I just don't much like the timing," he said. "I mean... I can't think of any way it would benefit a company like this one to get involved with a man like Andou or this Verwandlung group, whoever they might be. I checked the share prices and their stock's in freefall over this Charme mess, but the evidence…"<br>"Evidence?" Ken blinked. Please, the look in his eyes said, stop talking about the stock market. "Evidence of what? All we've got on these guys is a bunch of… of stuff happening that sorta _might_ have something to do with them but just as easily might not. That don't add up to much more than a hunch."  
>Omi nodded, admitting the logic. "I guess so," he said: he turned in his chair, he met Ken's eyes. What are you thinking, Ken-kun? "But sometimes the best thing to do with a hunch is to play it, right? And circumstantially—"<p>

Circumstantially, Tellus is everywhere in this.

"Well, look at it this way, Ken-kun. Firstly," Omi said, counting off the points on his fingers, "There's the old laboratory. It's Tellus property, they just don't have any need for another facility like that. Maybe it's not just coincidence Andou set up there. Could be someone from Tellus was letting him use it. Secondly, if Tellus knew he was there they must have known Charme would hurt people. Why stake their reputation on a drug they knew was dangerous? If they knew what was going on there must have been something in it for them. They must have known it would be a PR disaster. And it can't have been money, they're hemorrhaging profit right now…"  
>Ken snapped his fingers. "Andou's data."<br>"Exactly," Omi said, "but why do they want _that_? Thirdly, Andou had vanished. Nobody saw him for almost a year – but this Verwandlung group knew exactly where to find him, and someone at Tellus might have done. That might mean there's a connection. There might be a connection with Yamanouchi's death, too… I'd have to check to be sure, but it certainly doesn't look like there was anything suspicious about their actions before he died."  
>"Wow. That's… either there's a lotta coincidence going round or these guys are up to something."<br>"It really is starting to look that way, isn't it? And it doesn't really seem like this Shun Yamanouchi was a popular choice for the new President, either, not if two Directors left straight after he took the job."  
>Ken looked dubious. "You think that's connected, too?"<br>"Well, maybe. One man leaving could just be a coincidence, but two looks a lot like a statement, doesn't it?"

Did it? The look on Ken's face said he wasn't sure and that, Omi supposed, was hardly surprising when his friend only met businessmen when they'd been misbehaving and even then the acquaintance never lasted long. Offices, to Ken, were things that happened to other people; business was a mystery and a boring one. No wonder he was looking lost.

"What are you thinking, Ken-kun?"  
>"Is it me or does none of this feel right?" Ken gave the monitor a flat, suspicious look, as if he had caught the computer conspiring to keep secrets from him. "Christ, I'm no expert on this shit but it can't <em>all<em> be chance, can it? There's just… well, you only _get_ so many coincidences, right?"  
>"I'd say so," Omi said. "Maybe I'm just seeing what I want to, but this is starting to look an awful lot like a pattern."<p>

(Didn't mean it was though. It takes more than a string of bad luck to make a conspiracy. Shun Yamanouchi was far more likely to be inexperienced and incompetent than any kind of crook. Andou was dead, Verwandlung a cipher: never mind what had happened to Nishida, the mission was over. If there was anything more to it Kritiker would tell him, Persia would pass it down. The human mind loved patterns, loved them so much it saw them where they had never existed at all, and yet—)

Something was happening, or nothing was. Only one way to tell which, right?

"I think I'm going to look into this company a bit more," Omi said. "Tell Aya-kun I'm working down here, okay?"  
>"Sure thing," Ken said, and smiled. "Let me know if you need any help."<p>

* * *

><p>The office might have been picked out of a catalogue. All low-lying power furniture and vast expanses of carpet, vast windows, it was a status symbol and nothing more. It was another rich man's toy, visual proof for the dull-witted that its owner had made it. It was pretty but unrevealing and, ultimately, entirely uninteresting; Crawford spared it no more than a cursory glance. He was far more interested in its owner, who was—<p>

Japanese bosses were very much of a type; Shun Yamanouchi, sat stiff and proud behind a landing-strip of a desk and flanked by two unsmiling men in identical suits, very much failed to fit it. How very curious, Crawford thought, though he knew far better than to show it. He left it to Schuldig to react for him.

"Ah, Mister Crawford. How nice to see you. Didn't I tell you, Nakayama-san? Every man has his price."

Crawford simply smiled, and bowed slightly. Every man had his reasons, too.

Nothing Yamanouchi could have offered could possibly been as compelling as Schuldig and the man next door. The man next door – some Kondo or Satou or Itou – who nonetheless managed to live very large for an assistant section chief with a young family. The man whose company was currently being audited, who had realized that the audit was taking rather too long, and who had spent the last three evenings, or so Schuldig assured him, in an enjoyable lather of indecision about whether or not he should come clean about the money he'd been embezzling or if he should empty his bank account and bolt. Better than television, Schuldig had assured Crawford with a smirk…

We're leaving, was all Crawford had said.

He had left it to Schuldig to figure out why, too.

Edogawa was a memory and a bad one at that; Yamanouchi an unlikely savior: a drowning man couldn't afford the luxury of choice. There was, after all, more than one way to hide. Lying low had brought him nothing but cultivated boredom: time to give plain sight a go. Two days out of the safehouse and here he was, stood in another oversized showpiece of an office nobody ever worked in, consenting to be bought. His game could stand the addition of a handful of new pieces.

"I take it," Yamanouchi said brightly, "you know why you've been called here?"  
>"I presume you have a proposition for us," Crawford said; stood two paces behind him, Schuldig thrust his hands into his jacket pockets, rocked back on his heels, gave the ceiling a sardonic smile. "Aside from that, I'm afraid you have the advantage over me."<br>Oh really? Yamanouchi raised a brow, lips quirking in what could have been amusement. "You surprise me, Mister Crawford. I would have thought a man like you would have known exactly what I wished to speak with you about. Your reputation precedes you, I'm afraid."  
>"Don't play games, Yamanouchi," Schuldig said: his voice was harsh, he spoke that one bit too loud, he wasn't even trying to hide his irritation. "We're here. What do you want?"<p>

Yamanouchi simply laughed, and that was curious too. Maybe there was more to this spoiled child than Crawford had thought. "Well, I see Schwarz go in for plain speaking. I rather like that. I tend to distrust excessive politeness, it's so damnably dishonest." The president lit a cigarette, took a drag, pushed the box toward Crawford with the tips of the fingers. "What I want, Mister… Schuldig, wasn't it? is your assistance. I believe Schwarz have worked as bodyguards before – for the late Prime Minister, is that correct?"

"Indeed, President Yamanouchi," Crawford said. He ignored the cigarettes. "Quite correct."

Exactly what was that supposed to mean? Yamanouchi's eyes narrowed; the cigarette touched to the lips may have hidden a frown. There was nothing there: just a simple statement and Crawford's smile, cool, flat and utterly dishonest. What you see, President Yamanouchi, is absolutely all you're going to get.

"Now, I believe your last employer—" Yamanouchi hesitated, as if listening to someone else speak, then laughed. "Oh, this is ridiculous. To Hell with it, let's dispense with euphemism. You know exactly why Takatori hired you; I've heard the rumors and personally I happen to believe them. You – Schwarz – you are psychics."  
>It wasn't a question. Crawford inclined his head slightly. "We prefer <em>talented<em>, but yes."  
>"Very well." Yamanouchi smiled. It wasn't a businessman's smile. "Mister Crawford, I will be frank. I do not need bodyguards. I have bodyguards. What I need from you is your <em>talents<em>. That being the case," the President said, narrow eyes narrowing further, "I don't think it too much to expect an explanation of how they work – or an assurance that you will not use them against me, or any of my agents."

Schuldig snorted, gave the ceiling a satiric smile – yeah, you can expect that all you like! – then he raised his eyebrows in sudden surprise, shooting Crawford a dubious glance as the American let a thought slip past his shields. Crawford, what the Hell—

"Of course," Crawford said smoothly. "I totally understand. President Yamanouchi, I am a precognitive. My colleague here is a telepath. The rest of our unit are somewhat more useful."  
>"I see. I believe we can work with that, don't you think, Nakayama-san?" Yamanouchi turned to one of the mutes by the desk; the man nodded once. It might have been simply acknowledgement. "I am, however, somewhat concerned… let me put it like this. While I can certainly see the value of a telepath, I would not keep a guard dog if I feared its bite. Why should I trust that your colleague—" the president's narrow eyes narrowed further as they flickered across Schuldig's face, "—is not reading <em>my<em> mind, too?"  
>"That won't be a problem. I believe you may be what my colleague calls a void."<br>"A void?"  
>"The precise phrase would be <em>eine Leere<em> but that would be the closest translation, yes."

The strangest thing about it was it had never come up before. Yamanouchi was watching him, not Schuldig: fortunate, when sometimes even Schuldig would give himself away. The redhead's eyes narrowed slightly; he shot a glance at Crawford, and he frowned. Crawford – and though Crawford was no mind-reader, here and now he never would have needed to be – what do you think you're playing at?

He could feel Schuldig testing his shields again, and Crawford dropped them for a moment, thinking very clearly and deliberately of nothing but the game: I'm protecting our interests, you fool. The least you can do is play along.

"Explain," Yamanouchi said.  
>And Crawford smiled, and told the President lies. "It's quite simple, really. A <em>void<em> is what we call a telepathic dead spot: a mind that, for whatever reason, is off-limits. Effectively, such people – such as yourself, President Yamanouchi – are naturally immune from my colleague's powers. It's rare, but not that rare… I'd estimate between five and eight percent of the population are voids. You're not the first one we've met, but I can't say we've been employed by one before."  
>"Well, there's a first time for everything. Thank you, Mister Crawford. Now… Schuldig." The president gave him a sharp look. "I trust this isn't something you'll find problematic?"<br>Schuldig merely shrugged. "I don't need to know what you think."  
>"Very well, then. I believe, gentlemen, that we have a deal."<p>

The president stood, stepped out from behind the oversized desk, holding out one hand; they shook. The president's grip was powerful, the handshake firm and unflinching – no, this Yamanouchi didn't fit the mold at all. Negotiations over, Yamanouchi led the way over to a cluster of low-slung chairs, gesturing to Crawford that he should sit; an elegant secretary, discreetly summoned from the outside office, offered surprisingly tolerable coffee and disappointing little biscuits that tasted like sugary cardboard, which Schuldig ate anyway and then asked for more.

"Now," Yamanouchi said after an eternity of small-talk had been dispensed with, "As to precisely _why_ your services are required…"  
>"I would imagine," Crawford said with a perfectly straight face, "that you have a problem only we can fix."<br>Yamanouchi simply nodded. "Unfortunately, it seems that may be the case. My organization, Mister Crawford, has been targeted by assassins. One of my men was murdered in his own office. Another's life was threatened… Doctor Yaeko Nishida. The doctor is one of my most valuable assets, and I intend to ensure her security. That—" Yamanouchi set down the coffee cup and sat back, hands folded, "—would be where you come in. Am I correct in assuming you've had dealings with these kinds of groups before?"  
>"Of course," Crawford said. "Powerful men often acquire equally powerful enemies…"<br>He got no further. "With one group, Mister Crawford, in particular?"

Schuldig, slumped in his chair with his head tipped back and a cigarette burning disregarded between his lips, sat up and looked over at Crawford, a question in his eyes. Crawford nodded slightly: now this he had seen coming. Yes, Schuldig, that _is_ why we're here. A part of it, anyway. The president simply watched, hands folded, and waited. It must have been as good an answer as any.

"We have names," Yamanouchi said into the silence. "Nakayama-san?"  
>The dark bodyguard stepped forward; he cleared his throat. "I saw them," he said. "At least the ones who came after the Doctor. There were probably others. Names were Ken and Yuji, or maybe it was Youji. Something like that. Yuji's a tall guy. Early twenties. Sunglasses, dyed blond hair. The other one's just a kid, eighteen or nineteen or so—"<br>"Weiss," Schuldig said. "We've met." And he grinned sudden and savage and predatory, showing his eye-teeth.  
>The President smiled. "So you'd welcome a reunion, then." It was no question at all. "That can be arranged."<p>

* * *

><p>Twenty minutes till close. Leaning on the end of a broom, Ken gazed out of the rain-washed window at the crowded streets, at the commuters huddled beneath their umbrellas, their jackets pulled tight about themselves. Christ, going through all that just to get home… At least all he'd have to do once they'd closed up was walk upstairs.<p>

He was starting to wonder if Moth ever went home. There she was again, hanging round a display of pot plants dressed in a waitress's plain white blouse and black skirt, and this was the third time this week, wasn't it? If he lived in Oshiage he sure as Hell wouldn't waste his evening hanging round in Jinnan every time he got off work, he'd go back and take a bath and try to forget tomorrow like a normal human being, but then if he lived in Oshiage he wouldn't have gone to Kamiyama-cho every day to pour coffee and clear tables. It wasn't like there was nowhere in all Katsushika selling cheap lunches to office workers, was there? The woman had to be daft.

It took Youji to work out why she was doing it, but then to him it had never even been a question.

"She can't need that many pot plants," Ken said as Moth reached for a pot of white cyclamen.  
>"Of course she doesn't," Youji said; Ken started. He'd thought Youji was still outside finishing up his cigarette, but here he was, all damp hair and expensive cologne, giving Moth a slightly ironic smile. "<em>We<em> don't need that many pot plants, kid. She certainly doesn't, unless she really likes the idea of living in a greenhouse…"  
>"Well, what's the point then?"<br>"What do you think?" Youji asked: the girl, blushing slightly, her head shyly bowed, was waiting the counter where Aya was wrapping a bouquet for a smartly-dressed young man who was visibly fidgeting. "Why do you think she hasn't asked you to ring that thing up for her?"  
>Ken shrugged. "Because I'm cleaning up?"<br>"Nominally, Ken, yes you are, but it's actually because you're not Aya and don't ask me how he keeps on doing it, but I suppose some women like them pretty and tedious…"  
>"You sure you're not just mad she's not after you?" Ken asked, and ducked pre-emptively. "And I don't buy it anyway, she's too old for that schoolgirl crap."<br>"That," Youji said airily, "is because you haven't been paying attention. You notice how long it takes her to decide what she's getting?"  
>"Yes, and it's bloody annoying…"<br>"Exactly," Youji said, as if the rest of it should have been obvious – then, when Ken only looked blank, he added, "Ken, at least pretend you're not completely clueless. She only ever goes up to the counter when Aya's already serving. She's not after flowers, she's after an excuse to talk to him. Keep up, kid."

Thanks for that, Youji. Bastard couldn't have been more patronizing if he'd topped all that off by ruffling his hair.

Of course he'd noticed. Ken simply hadn't imagined it meant anything, that was all. This was Aya, right? He… well, okay Ken guessed that women, or some of them, must have found him attractive enough. How else was he supposed to explain Sakura? But it wasn't like Aya ever did anything to encourage them and while that might have been enough for a schoolgirl who, when it came down to it, didn't really want the whole thing to go anywhere because it was safer that way – there _were _girls did that too, right? – wasn't Moth old enough to want a little more?

Aya, for Christ's sake. A grown woman and she might as well have been mooning over a poster. At least a guy in a poster would have been smiling at her.

"Really?" Ken said. "Well, good luck to her's all I can say. Reckon he's even noticed she's a girl yet?"  
>"Jury's still out on that one," Youji replied, absently pushing back his hair. "I don't think he ever got there with Sakura and Ken? I'm not sure you're in any position to talk. At least Aya's never run away with the idea of marrying a woman he's known for a month."<br>Ken glared at him. It should have been dead and buried, but… "Never said I was going to marry her."  
>"You didn't have to," Youji said mildly.<p>

And Ken might have said something he'd gone on to regret (and damn the bit where they were in the shop, where Aya was bidding a matter-of-fact farewell to the nervous young man, where Moth stood hushed and expectant with a pot plant clasped to her chest) when the door to the cellar creaked open and Omi stepped into the shop, blinking like a man who'd not seen daylight in months. As if the last thing he'd expected was to push open his door and discover a flower shop there…

The kid recovered well, give him that. He blinked, he seemed to shake himself; he gave Moth a brilliant smile that even Ken wasn't quite sure was feigned. "Good evening, Moth-san!" he called. "You're staying late." There wasn't a hint of reproach in it. How the Hell had Omi managed that?  
>"Oh, Omi-kun!" The girl seemed to start, and she colored. "I… I was at work. Café Rubin? Thought I'd call in on my way to the station… You should all stop by some day, I'll give you a great discount…" But it was Aya she wanted, Youji was right about that. She stole a glance at him, quickly lowering her eyes, and her blush deepened.<br>"Don't put yourself out," Youji murmured, more to himself than to Moth.  
>"We do really nice lunches," Moth said, seemingly entirely for Aya's benefit. "You must <em>eat<em>, right? It's not far, just down the road…"  
>"Of course," Aya said drily, "we eat."<br>Moth blinked. Omi grinned nervously, and changed the subject. "You're buying another plant, Moth-san? You must really like flowers."  
>"You'll be able to open your own shop soon." That was Youji, trying again, and this time the girl must have heard him, because she giggled.<br>"Oh," she said, "I wouldn't say that…"

Ken decided he'd had enough. Let the others encourage the woman if they liked and yes, Fujimiya, that does include you, you can't even _talk_ to a girl like that without her running away with the idea you've connected. He wasn't about to play along with her dumb-ass theory that Aya was somehow boyfriend material – look where that had gotten Sakura. Anyway, someone had to fetch in that bamboo and it damn sure wasn't going to be Youji now, was it?

He hesitated by the bamboo, glanced back through the windows. There was Aya, frowning over Moth's flowers; there was Moth gazing adoringly up at him and digging in her purse for her money. Most likely she was smiling, probably kidding himself that he was too above-it-all for friendly teasing and that it didn't mean for a moment he wanted her to go away. There she was telling herself that buying flowers every day was just fine if she got to see Aya again while she was doing it. How much did they pay waitresses anyway? Ken suspected it wasn't a lot.

Just tell her you don't like her, Aya. Tell her she's wasting her time…

"Bye, Ken-kun," she said as she stepped past him and out into the rain, her little plant clasped tight to her chest. "See you tomorrow." And she waved, as if this all made them friends.  
>"Yeah," Ken said, "Yeah, I guess."<p>

Because someone's gotta stop her, and it shouldn't be up to me.

"I thought the shop would be empty," Omi was saying as Ken stepped back into the shop and wrestled the bamboo into its spot by the door. "She's been here every day this week, hasn't she?"  
>"Pretty much. She missed Tuesday," Youji said. "Must have been her day off… Aya, can't you just end this farce?"<br>Aya met Youji's eyes, raised a pointed brow. "Farce?"  
>"<em>Farce<em>, Aya," Youji said, sidling over to the redhead and draping an arm about his shoulders. "Yes. Come on. Take one for the team and ask her for coffee. She'll soon figure out you've got no conversation and move on, and we can all forget this ever happened."  
>Aya shrugged Youji's arm off his shoulder and went to close the shutters. "This has nothing to do with me."<br>"Except for the bit where she's crazy about you," Youji pointed out.  
>Aya shot him an irritated look – Kudou, I know where you sleep, now would you please stop talking. "I don't know what you're talking about," he said, and of course that wasn't going to be good enough. This was Youji he was talking to, and on Youji's specialist subject at that. Ken met Omi's eyes, gave the boy a small shrug.<br>"Look, Fujimiya," Youji was saying, and something in his tone said he was only being entirely serious, "the way I see this you've got two choices here. Moth likes you. She's cute, she's willing and she's legal and if she's a bit nuts, you're a big boy. You either like her back and make the most of this, or you don't and you let her down gently. Anything else is unfair on her."  
>"Did you want something, Omi?" Aya said.<p>

And Omi took a deep breath, and Ken thought, _oh, shit_. The look on the kid's face, the hesitation before he started to speak, the way he glanced about himself, quick and anxious, as if to make sure they were really alone – the only thing it could add up to was trouble, but the kind of trouble that normally came pre-packaged in a buff folder. Ken felt himself starting to frown. But he hadn't seen Manx in weeks – not since the Charme mission. _What the_—

"You figure something out to tell that girl." Youji pointed a warning finger at Aya. "Or I'm gonna step in."  
>Aya looked away, erasing him with the turn of his head. "Omi."<br>"Well… we should probably just close early," Omi said. "Something's come up."

Trouble it was.

Ten minutes and Ken was stood in the basement, gazing with Youji and Aya over Omi's shoulder at what appeared to be someone else's email inbox. It might have seemed like more of an intrusion if only its owner had been checking it but he'd only bothered to read one message out of the last twenty, and even that Omi'd most likely done for him…

"Omi, whose email is this?"  
>"Kasamatsu's," Omi said. "He was Andou's go-between."<br>Oh, yeah. One of those Charme guys, the distributor, now terminally indisposed. Youji (hands in pockets, somehow managing to sprawl while standing upright) gave a chuckle, and shook his head. "Ken," he said, "when I have my mid-life crisis, do me a favor? Remind me fast cars and pretty girls still exist and I don't have to get my kicks marking time with mad scientists."  
>"All right," Ken said. "Youji, fast cars and pretty girls still exist."<p>

Most of it, of course, was nothing but junk – the usual crap that piled up in any email inbox nobody bothered checking for a few days. Mailing list notifications, online subscriptions, the usual stuff about pills and creams. Youji probably had the exact same garbage in his inbox, in between the things his girlfriends sent him and… and whatever else it was Youji usually got emails about. The outlier, though—

"Nishida?"

—well, no matter how many girls he charmed into giving him their email addresses, Youji wouldn't have anything like _that_. Even he wouldn't be getting love-letters from the one that got away.

"Nishida." Omi clicked on her message, called it up for what must have been the fourth time at least. "But… this can't be from her, can it? At the very least it's not in good faith, I don't see how she couldn't know Kasamatsu was dead…"  
>"What does she say?" Aya asked.<br>Nothing good, from the look on Omi's face. "Actually, Aya-kun, that's the second thing that's worrying me."

She wanted to meet up: that was what it came down to. No pleasantries, no expressions of concern: Nishida might have been a stranger who hadn't seen a Tokyo newspaper for all she seemed to care about Kasamatsu's health. She had a new employer. She had a proposition for him. And an address in Rinkai-cho, just off the Bayshore route of the Metropolitan expressway, and Tellus showing up like a bad smell – she would be there, at ten past ten on Thursday night. All Kasamatsu had to do was be there too…

"Whoever wrote that," Youji said definitely, "doesn't write like a woman."  
>Ken frowned at him over one banked shoulder. "What does that even mean?"<br>"So maybe she didn't write it…"  
>"No," Omi said. "I think she did. Ken-kun's right, Youji-kun. This is a business message, and isn't Nishida working for someone else now? They could easily have asked her to write this."<br>"Why, though?" Aya asked, though it didn't really sound like a question. Aya's questions never did. "She's clearly not interested in Kasamatsu."  
>And Omi said, "No. She's interested in us."<p>

Well, Ken thought, that makes sense – and where was surprise? It was funny how inevitable it felt, as if this had been exactly what they'd been watching for ever since that night in Kawasaki. Here someone was inviting them into the slaughterhouse, all but holding open the door and waving them through, never mind the man with the knife stood in the shadows – and all Ken was thinking was _oh_.

(It wasn't as if any of this was exactly new.)

"That's a bit of a leap, isn't it?" Youji said.  
>"Not really," Ken said. "We did just try and kill her."<br>"Touché, Ken, but look at the stunt they just pulled. We can't be the only people in town want to have a word with these guys. Reporters." Youji snapped his fingers. "Why can't they be targeting reporters? We're probably not the only people reading this guy's mail."  
>Omi sighed, resting his brow in his palm, looking for all the world like a kid frowning over a difficult assignment. "But not everyone knows about Kasamatsu," he said. "Kritiker kept his name out of the papers. The only people outside of Kritiker who even know he was there when Andou died are all with this <em>Verwandlung<em> group."  
>"Us, then." Aya turned away. As if that was all that needed to be said. To him, maybe it was.<p>

And that – it's us they want – that meant it was a set-up. A trap, baited and checked, poised to spring. Omi closed the email, stared blankly at Kasamatsu's overburdened inbox as if, somewhere in between the junk mail and the irritated demands of out-of-the-loop associates, he'd find some kind of answer. Something to put between the four of them and the inevitable, something that meant they didn't have to do this, and do it for nothing at that…

"So," Ken said, because someone had to say it, "what're we gonna do? Ignore it?"  
>"We can't ignore it." That was Aya again. Who died and made <em>him<em> boss? "They're trying to draw us out. We ignore this, all they'll do is try something else."  
>The worst thing about it was he was most likely right. Omi nodded, eyes grave. "And if they do that, and we don't see it coming… I know it's not much of a choice, Ken-kun, but I think this way is probably better. At least," he said hopefully, "we'll find out what they want, right?"<br>"Right," Ken said. If Omi wanted better ideas, he was looking at the wrong guy.

Better to walk, eyes open, into the trap you saw coming than fall into the one you didn't.


	7. Fehler: A single step

**Prüfung**  
><em>earth, after rain<em>

A _Weiss Kreuz_ fanfic by laila

* * *

><p><strong>Part 6 – Fehler: A single step<strong>

Dark beasts, by their very nature, stuck to the shadows. By day they blended in, faceless and blameless and lost to the crowds; it was only in darkness that they shed their everyday skins and let themselves run wild…

Of course, a guy could say exactly the same things about Weiss. Florists were supposed to be harmless, weren't they?

9:40 PM. Maybe cities never slept, but with the shops shuttered and the streets grown dark and cold, even Tokyo could manage to ease off a bit. Youji – cold, tense, watchful – looked up and into the leftover light of the city and saw nothing but the waning moon snared by strips of floating cloud. Sighing and shaking his head (there were never any stars) he ran one gloved hand along the sleeve of his coat. Yup, definitely Autumn again. I, he thought, and even the thought felt tired and stale, am getting too old for this.

"Why," he muttered, "can't targets ever meet at lunchtime like normal human beings…"  
>Ken hadn't been supposed to overhear, but he must have done. He turned, gave Youji a funny look. "Because they're all werewolves. Are we doing this or what?"<p>

He didn't wait for an answer. He simply turned away, pushing between two overgrown bushes and scrambling away down an embankment, down to where Yaeko Nishida almost certainly wasn't waiting for anyone at all. Youji shivered and followed, only to stop short at the top of the rise. Well, he thought, _that_ doesn't look promising.

It was a construction site. A dramatist's dream of bare concrete, naked girders and torn plastic billowing in the slight night breeze, snared in a tangle of scaffolding in the middle of a bare and rutted square of earth. A smaller building, almost complete, crouched alongside the half-finished main block. It had been almost complete for several months, and already it was falling back into ruin, a few weeds sprouting about its sides and winding cautious tendrils of green up its bare walls. There were no cranes, no diggers or cement mixers – just piles of damaged bricks and split bags of mortar, and a dilapidated and weather-beaten pre-fabricated cabin that might once have served as the site office and now was nothing at all.

Even the warning signs were the worse for wear, their cautions half-lost beneath a tangle of graffiti, blotted out by flyers for club nights and fire sales. Youji ignored them just as completely as whatever kid had cut the hole in the cyclone fence had done, slipping through the gap in the wire and cursing as his coat snagged on one of the cut ends.

No, Nishida wasn't going to be anywhere near this place. Nobody would prime such an obvious trap with live bait.

"Damn," Ken said to nobody in particular. "This _really_ looks like a set-up…"

Thank you for that, Ken, but I don't think the rest of us had missed that bit. The last thing Nishida was going to trade that old laboratory for was another waterfront deathtrap— Youji didn't say anything. Annoying though Ken's tendency to state out loud things everyone else was already aware of was, the kid was probably just tense. Hell, they were all tense. Better to focus on the fact of the trap and thank whatever God might still be inclined to look on him kindly that whoever was behind tonight's little diversion, at least it wasn't anybody he'd wanted to trust. Not this time.

(The bitch is dead.)

"Come on," Ken was whispering. "What is this, a movie? Why can't she meet the guy in a bar?"  
>Youji raised his eyes heavenward, resisted the urge to sigh. Okay, Hidaka, your slack stops <em>there<em>. "Try a cemetery. She'd need a medium, Ken, or have you forgotten?"  
>"Yeah, but say she didn't—"<br>"Ken-kun," Omi said quietly. "Please."

Someone's still out there. Watch your back.

Presume we're being followed. Presume this is about to get very bad very fast. Stood with Aya by the sagging pre-fab, Youji watched as Omi peered cautiously in through the verdigrised windows, crossbow poised. Looking for the shadow that fell where no shadow should have done, for the damp and sickening shine of eyes open in the darkness; listening for the subtle shift that told a tale of another person, keeping as still and as silent as they could.

"Christ!"

Youji flinched. _Ken_. Ken had tried the door.

Recoiling, one hand to his mouth, Ken stood frozen with one hand on the door handle, his eyes wide and gaze fixed on something lying just inside the decaying shack. Youji hurried over, he followed Ken's gaze: he caught his breath, raised his eyebrows, pulled a face. Quick and anxious, Omi traded glances with Aya. At least, Youji thought, there was no blood…

It had been a man, a man in a worn jeans and a heavy jacket, disheveled but clean-shaven and not much older than Youji was. He lay on his front on the mottled floor, head canted unnaturally to one side and bruises circling his throat. His eyes were wide and milky, his lips parted: he looked confused. It had been fast, at least. Youji stared at him; he forced himself to look away. To look at the battered rucksack stood in the shadows in one corner of the cabin and the tarpaulin tacked carefully up over one window, the thin futon with its neatly-folded pile of moldering blankets, the stack of newspapers and empty bottles. The dead man had called this place home, and he'd died for the presumption.

Omi crept cautiously into the cabin to crouch by the dead man's side and went through the motions of checking for a pulse they all knew he would never find, drawing off one glove and pressing his fingers to the vagrant's cooling throat. He shook his head.

"An hour," he said softly. "Maybe two. No more."  
>You didn't argue with Omi when it came to things like that. "Any chance," Youji said, because someone had to and Ken was too busy looking quietly freaked to contribute, "whoever did this has already cleared out?"<br>"Unlikely," Aya said. And, "Keep your eyes open."

Nobody needed to be told that, either.

* * *

><p>"Told you they'd go for it."<p>

She didn't belong there. Stood in the shadow of a pillar just inside the shell of the main building's top floor, the girl would have looked less out of place in a nightclub than roaming Rinkai-cho waiting for trouble to find her. Dressed in red and black, in a cropped jacket and a silly, fussy little skirt, she looked like a dancer in a pop video or (more likely) a character in one of those violent cartoons they watched over here: she simply didn't look right. As if this was all a joke, a game… Nobody had thought to ask if he minded and he was professional enough to know to keep his mouth shut but Christ, if he had to work with a kid at all, what was wrong with a crop-haired nineteen-year-old with an SA80?

A smile on her face, her dark curls caught and tumbled by the night breeze, Komachi Segawa was carefree as a child on a climbing frame. The girl was playing.

Well. High time she stopped. "They did not," Winters said; Komachi blinked her too-pale, too-bright eyes and bristled, as if he had spoken simply to annoy her. Why've you always got to rain on the parade, Winters? "They are all too wary. Besides even if they were not warned when they arrived, they certainly will be watching now. I told you that you were only to silence him."  
>"The <em>tramp<em>?" The girl laughed. It wasn't a schoolgirl's giggle. "Come on. The President said no witnesses. And anyway, who's going to miss him?"  
>"The man would have been no witness. He did not trouble us."<br>"You think he wouldn't have heard something?" Komachi retorted, catching at her curls and pulling them back into a high ponytail. "I've saved us the time. And who _cares_ if they're on their guard, it's more fun this way."

Fun. Yes, this was a damned game all right.

Oh, but she was trouble, was this one. More trouble than she was worth. Pretty, sweet-faced, primly respectable little Komachi Segawa, the psychopath next door. If it hadn't been this it would only have been something else, sooner or later – infanticide maybe, or one of those Angel of Death nurses. The cops and the services sure as Hell wouldn't have touched her. How had Yamanouchi gotten hold of her, anyway? God only knew where you went to find girls like this, mad little bitches who didn't belong anywhere except for prison or the morgue…

Winters narrowed his eyes, gazed down across the muddy yard at the figures clustered about the dilapidated cabin: four of them, all male, all – even from here he knew it for sure – all of them kids, all well on the wrong side of twenty-five. The enemy, already watchful, already half-fearful and on their guard, moving with a desperate, hopeless stealth and who'd send these four to do a man's job? The smallest, little more than a boy, slipped back through the door and closed it silently behind him; the rangy blonde from Andou's laboratory looked around and up, in entirely the wrong direction, then falling into step behind the kid. Moving out.

(They didn't look right there, either.)

"Hey, grandpa? Cat got your tongue?"  
>He didn't reply. Winters simply keyed the comm. he wore in one ear and muttered, "And we're go."<br>"Sir," Komachi said, "_yes_ sir."

And she grinned, and swung herself onto the web of scaffolding that cocooned the building, and vanished.

* * *

><p>But Ken saw other things, too. He noticed movement, noticed shadows falling where no shade should have been. He saw patterns, saw the breaks in them: you put up with the dumb shit he said – or at least you did if you had any sense – because sure, nine times out of ten he wasn't telling you anything you hadn't picked up on, but what happened when he <em>was<em>? Annoying though wide-eyed comments about empty rooms being, in fact, empty were, Ken didn't only state the obvious. He stopped short, he tensed so suddenly that Youji almost walked into him, and very nearly ended up with a face full of metal for his pains.

"Christ _dammit_ Youji!"

Ken hadn't shouted, but he'd wanted to. The boy shoved him away, took an angry pace backward, raised his head. He was thinking about something else_._ Ken was staring, to Youji's eyes, in entirely the wrong direction and that (oh, _crap_) that meant they'd all missed something. That—

"Ken? What's the holdup?"  
>"Ssh," Ken hissed. "Shut <em>up<em>!"

—that meant Ken had _seen_ something, and that could only mean trouble.

The plastic, Youji decided, was a bad joke. Wind-plump, billowing like the torn sails of a ghost ship, if Ken figured he'd caught something under all that Christ alone knew what it was. There's nothing there, Ken, he wanted to say – just the stark, truncated form of the building trapped in its web of scaffolding, and the ragged sheets of plastic flapping listlessly in the breeze. Nothing out of place, nothing even remotely sinister, this side of the set dressing but since when had Ken been so jumpy that set dressing alone would put the wind up him?

There had to be something there, someone. Someone, Youji knew, had broken into this site and killed the tramp in the cabin, someone who knew they were coming and didn't want any witnesses to… to what? Someone who was still out there somewhere – and all he could see was shadows and the leftover light of the city, all he could hear was the swish of cars on the expressway and the snap and rustle of the plastic. No movement. No flickering shadows, no crunch of footsteps on gravel. Nothing…

But a dead man lay on his back in a rotting cabin, and Ken stared fixedly at nothing at all, muscles tensed, barely daring to breathe. You couldn't tell Ken he hadn't seen anything, pretend this wasn't the set-up it so obviously was, but did that mean the trap had to spring _now_?

"Shit," Ken muttered, and turned to run.

Yeah, that really had been too optimistic by half. Youji – now just wait a goddamned minute, kid! – reached out to catch Ken by the shoulder, to stop him short and demand he tell him what he'd seen: his fingers closed briefly on the worn leather of Ken's jacket, and then on nothing at all as the boy pushed past him, pulled away.

"Ken-kun?" Omi, eyes wide, peered past Aya in simple confusion. "Are you all ri…"  
>Ken turned briefly, locking eyes with Omi over one shoulder. "Company!"<p>

And he was gone, scrambling up and over a pile of debris and down the other side in a sharp, harsh skitter of sliding gravel, feet scraping slightly as he lost his footing, then breaking back into a run—

"Well," Youji said in his normal voice, because why bother whispering now? "that answers that question. Now what, O genius leader?"  
>Split up, that much was obvious (thanks for everything, Hidaka), but define that, if you please. Omi might have sighed; he certainly looked like he wanted to. Well, building a Ken Is A Dumbass Exemption Clause into every single plan he came up with had to be getting old. "Someone's got to go after him," Omi said. "I mean, we have no idea how many people are out there, do we?"<br>And knowing Ken he'd run into at least half of them. "True," Youji said. "You want me to…"  
>"No, Youji-kun," Omi said. "I think I'd better go."<br>Well, he shouldn't have wanted to in the first place. "Suit yourself. Watch your back, hey, kid?"

Omi nodded, of course he would; he gave Youji a small smile and good luck returning _that_ one. Youji gave it his best shot anyway, but the smile felt tight and strange on his face. Good job this wasn't a proper mission, or it'd already be a total fuckup… he stood and watched as Omi walked away, clambering carefully up and over the pile of debris and vanishing down the other side.

And then there were two. Youji pushed back his sleeve, resting one hand atop his watch. Heads up, Kudou: right now you're the closest thing to an early-warning system we've got… He turned to Aya, wondering what the Hell he was supposed to _say_ to him— not that it mattered when Aya was too busy staring at the smaller of the buildings, his jaw set and his eyes burning. The guy wasn't listening anyway.

For a moment Youji couldn't work out what _Aya_ thought he was looking at either – and, when all of a sudden he could, he could hardly have accounted it any real blessing. A nothing of a movement as something in the darkness gave a twitch and then he was staring straight at a dead man.

(Well, you _were _wondering what else could possibly go wrong.)

Red hair. Green coat. A figure framed in a second-storey window with one hand raised as if in a friendly salute: maybe he couldn't have seen the grin but Youji knew full well it must have been right in place. Christ! He'd have known that bastard a mile off! You're dead, he thought— so why wasn't it any kind of surprise to find _Schwarz_ mixed up in all this? This entire pointless charade had their fingerprints all over it. Youji's fingers tautened about his watch, and he wished he were drawing his wire about the maniac's throat again and pulling, pulling. Damn, and it was only dumb luck had stopped him finishing the job last time… You're _dead_, Schuldig, he thought: then, wearily, but that didn't stop us either.

"Oh, great," Youji muttered. "Was that…"  
>"Schwarz," Aya spat, as if that said it all. Pity he was right.<br>"Aya," Youji said, "you do realize he wanted you seeing that?"  
>Aya shot him an impatient look. "That's not important."<p>

Better hope you're right there, Aya. The redhead slipped away, too, drawing his sword and stealing soft as shadow toward the building, all his attention on the figure in the window – as if he feared that, should he look away for even a moment, Schuldig would slip back into the darkness and lose himself there, vanish as suddenly as he had appeared. I haven't finished with you, Schwarz. Don't you even think of running…

Like Schuldig would do a dumb-ass thing like that. Why flee from your own trap?

"Aya!"

He's got us right where he wants us, Fujimiya. You do know that, right?

Maybe that wasn't important either. If Schwarz had set the bait, Aya would swallow it gladly. Anything for the chance to avenge his family, his sister, and who cared that the girl was safe and whole and living in Nerima? Schwarz had tried to hurt her, to use her for their own ends: the bit where they'd failed, to Aya, was just another one of those unimportant little details. They'd wanted to, that was all that mattered. Duty and common sense could go hang.

His teammates, too. Youji sighed and buried his face in his palm, muttering darkly to himself – this _bloody _mission! Do I even want to know what else is going to go wrong? – and then he pulled himself together and got over it. Sorry, Aya, we're a team. I got your back, buddy, whether you like it or not.

* * *

><p>It was too dark. Down in the shadow of the building, even the leftover light of the city couldn't gain much purchase on the gloom. Skidding to a stop on a bare patch of ground that, in the fantasies of whoever designed this half-finished wreck, had probably been intended to be a forecourt, Omi glanced about himself, squinting into the darkness: nothing. Even to his trained eyes, there was nothing to see but the carcass of the building in its prison of scaffolding and flapping polythene and, more distant, the battered old hut, with the door Ken hadn't quite managed to close behind him swinging back and forth, back and forth in the quickening wind. Too quiet – he hated himself even for thinking it – but that didn't get him any closer to knowing how, when the silence finally broke, it would happen.<p>

It was too dark, and Ken moved too quickly. Ken couldn't have had more than two or three seconds on him, but that had been more than enough time for his friend to lose himself completely. Scrambling over the pile of debris, Omi had put a sight on him for a second or two: by the time Omi's sneakers had touched the dirt on the other side of the heap, Ken had rounded a corner or slipped into a doorway – done something, at any rate – and vanished.

The world held its breath. Whatever was going to happen, it was going to happen soon.

So it was a game, then? Omi nodded. All right then, there were worse things in the world than an enemy who figured he had the freedom to play. That spoke of overconfidence, and the overconfident get sloppy. Yes, Omi figured he could live with a games-player very well indeed. He drew a sedative-tipped dart from the case inside his jacket and, holding it poised between two slender fingers, started to walk toward the shell of the building, past a half-finished covered entryway. All right, then. A game it is…

And someone called Aya's name. Youji.

_Aya_. Omi stopped short, head snapping up: no, he counseled himself, Youji hadn't (had he?) sounded afraid. No, that was anger. Youji-kun's got this, he told himself. Aya… probably he just saw something and thought he had to deal with it alone. _Youji-kun's got this._ And you? You need to find Ken, before someone else can find him first.

Omi hadn't considered that anyone might be after him. Distracted by Youji's cry, he almost missed the soft skitter behind him. _Someone's there_.

He didn't think about it. He pivoted, the dart flying from his fingers toward the figure behind him—

Watched, wide-eyed, as they caught it in one black-gloved hand.

"_You_?"

It was a girl. A girl in black and red, with her tumbled black curls pulled back in a high ponytail and a confident, almost cocky smile on her pretty, pallid face, a smile far too calculated for a girl barely older than he was. Her eyes – pale, pale blue, but too much so – practically sparkled with mirth. So _that's_ Player One…

It was her all right. The same girl who had reminded him of Ouka, the girl who'd cross-examined him over a bouquet of carnations (hey, Omi, why do we never meet anyone normal?) but whatever resemblance Omi had seen, or fancied he had, to his dead sister it was nothing but a memory now. She was trouble. She was a target. She was – he knew it without having to ask – this girl was with Verwandlung.

"Me," she said. "So, Mr. Shopkeeper. Is this what you'd call stock taking, then?" And, still smiling, she cast the dart to the ground.  
>"This isn't a game." Omi reached for another dart. "You're protecting Nishida, aren't you?"<br>The girl's smile didn't so much as waver. "What a nasty mind you've got," she said airily. "Perhaps I was just passing through."  
>"Where is she?"<br>"Not here," the girl said. "But then you'd guessed that already. Hadn't you?"

And _now you see it_ – sudden and neat as a conjuring trick, there was a knife in the girl's hand. A black-handled stiletto switchblade, the point snapping into place with an audible _click_. For a moment she simply held it to the light as if to show it to him, smiling – then she sprang, running at him with a banshee scream. She moved too soon. The second dart whistled just shy of one shoulder and a miss, in this game, was as good as a mile: Omi snatched for another, but before he could find his range the girl was upon him and it was all he could do to bring the thing up fast enough to parry the stiletto's first, wild thrust.

She was fast. Very fast. She moved like a dancer and she struck like a wildcat: dammit, who taught this girl to move? She was good, very good – so much for _overconfident_! – and too damned close for him to find the advantage! Omi parried, launched a clumsy offensive, gripping the dart like a knife: the girl drew back, she laughed in his face, the stiletto describing a parabola though the air as she struck again, fast and deadly as any scorpion. She was trying to _kill_ him—! Heaven only knew how but Omi blocked it, catching the blade on the point of the dart.

"You're good!"

Omi said nothing. He simply came for her again, wild and desperate: she darted back, the point of the dart catching her across one shoulder. The girl flinched, she reached up to wipe at the blood – she still smiled. Why the _Hell_ was the woman smiling?! Omi stared wildly at her, feeling something inside him give a sick twist. She was enjoying this.

"I _like_ you!" The girl laughed. "And there I was thinking you'd be a letdown!"  
>It shouldn't have stung. It shouldn't have mattered what a girl like this thought of him. "You shouldn't!" Omi cried – he gasped as the girl made another series of quick, darting lunges with the knife, searching for an opening. Desperately parrying, hissing in shock and sudden agony as the stiletto laid open the flesh of his left arm, Omi jumped back and clear, setting his teeth against the pain. No. Later. You can think about that later. "We haven't even begun!"<p>

* * *

><p>—no, he'd definitely seen someone. They just hadn't gone inside, that was all, or hadn't stayed there. One or the other.<p>

It wasn't until he actually reached the skeleton of the main building that Ken began to have second thoughts, and even that was mainly because the place looked about as welcoming as a parking garage, and would have been a deathtrap even without the dark beasts. Hesitating by a hole wide enough for a pair of double doors – now this was the kind of place you found a body – he peered into the concrete shell and wondered if he could get away with passing on this one. Pools of burnished, leftover light spilled from the empty window frames, puddles of filthy water glistened on the rutted concrete floor: all he was thinking was _oh, come on_. How dumb did these guys think he was?

Like he'd needed any more confirmation Nishida was nowhere near this place. Even a woman who'd happily hung out in Andou's excuse for a laboratory for – well, for however long she'd been in there would have drawn the line at a dump like this.

Someone was, though.

Well, not like it's gonna get any nicer in there. Glancing quickly about himself (damn but it was quiet out there, so much so he could almost imagine he'd imagined seeing anything at all), Ken slipped through the gaping entryway and into nothing at all. Nothing but a echoing, cavernous space stinking of damp and rot. His footsteps echoed off the naked walls; dirty water seeped into his shoes and spattered the cuffs of his jeans.

Someone'd had ambitions for this place, this vast, empty, pointless _nothing_, haunted by shadows and falling to decay. They were there in the gaping, almost floor-length cavities opening out on the muddy yards, crying out for sheets of plate glass and something, anything to face onto; there in the sweep of shallow steps leading up to a second level, to a damp plaster wall speckled with mold, a pair of grim black portals opening onto nothing at all. They were there in the corridors leading off into perfect darkness, into the bowels of this crumbling wreck of a building…

Which was all very well and creepy, but it wasn't simply the atmosphere that was working on him.

(Just tell me one thing. Who's hunting who?)

He wasn't alone in here. Ken knew that as surely as he knew that even to move was to betray himself. The silence was too heavy, the shadows too thick and he, Christ damn it, couldn't see for looking! He knew it, though. He could feel the weight of a stranger's eyes; could sense, in the very deliberateness of the silence, someone else's waiting presence.

Yeah, I _get_ it. The hunter hunted, with you. What absolute bullshit! Ken kept moving, headed for the steps because he had to go somewhere, and all hugging the shadows would do was prolong the game he was already tired of playing. Screw the mind games, let's just get this over with and get out of here— so he made for the stairs, walking that one bit too fast. Well, you know what they say about moving targets. Just keep moving and keep your eyes open, and hope like Hell whoever's out there hasn't heard it too.

And nothing happened. Ken stopped. He turned, gazing back into the gloom, hands hanging loose by his sides. "All right," he said, because he had to say something. "I'm waiting—"

A single shot.

Ken dropped. He dived for the floor as soon as he saw the muzzle flash, dropping and rolling as the bullet whipped harmlessly overhead and buried itself in one of the walls. Too high, fuck it! Too high to be anything but a warning shot. Fuck, we _are_ playing! His ears ringing, damp seeping into his clothes, Ken mentally ran through a litany of obscenity, locker-room curses and soldier's slang, all meaning nothing but _God I've been dumb_. A gun. Of course the bastard had a fucking gun, why hadn't he realized that?! Cover, he was thinking frantically, where the Hell's the goddamn _cover_, Christ but Youji's gonna have a field day with this one!

He scrambled up, because it beat lying there and letting the bastard pick him off. He ran for the shadows – another shot; Ken ducked, he spat a curse, he ran for it; had that gone wide or had he just gotten lucky? – pressing himself back against the wall and baring the claws on his bugnuks for all the good it would fucking do him. Couldn't even _see_ the bastard! and if he'd gotten his angles wrong the guy could probably pick him off where he stood… now what the fuck was he supposed to do!?

Should have thought about that before, Hidaka. Bit late to start now!

* * *

><p>"<em>Ken<em>-kun!"

Omi's head snapped up, his eyes wide and horrified; the girl was all but forgotten as he turned to stare frantically at the building's half-finished shell, the breath catching in his throat. Oh, no… Ken didn't carry a gun. What was going on in there? He's all right, he told himself, he's _got_ to be all right: hope, just hope, and a forlorn hope at that. Ken-kun, please stay safe: it wasn't a mission and it wasn't worth dying for and for a single breathless moment nothing could have mattered, nothing at all, more than getting to him.

He might even have broken away, run right after him, but a flash of movement and a sudden shout had him whipping back round, arms raised—

"Go to Hell!"

After you!

He turned and Komachi was upon him. Contorted features, flying hair, a blur of red-and-black and light flashing on a blade: Omi yelped, more in surprise than fear; he threw himself sideways as the stiletto tore down again, lunging for the exposed flesh of his throat. The blade – he screamed – the blade had missed its mark by inches, scoring a shallow gash along the side of his throat, scything through fabric and flesh to lay open one shoulder. _Later_. Carried forward by her own momentum, the girl stumbled. She lost her footing, half-collapsing against his chest with a cry of alarm and Omi, giddy with shock and drunk on his own adrenalin, drove one elbow hard into her diaphragm.

The breath forced from her, Komachi reeled backward, arms cradled across her chest; she caught her heel on a pothole and then she was falling. She recovered well, turning the fall into a clumsy backward roll and scrambling back up, the knife still gripped tight in one gloved hand. Her bangs falling into her face, her eyes burning, she grimaced as she straightened, one hand pressed protectively to her aching ribs. The smile was gone.

She looked furious, and he was glad of it. No distractions, no more games. Sorry, Ken-kun, but you're on your own…

"Lucky little bastard!"  
>Omi, his bloodied fingers held tight to the torn flesh of his neck, met her eyes; he reached for another dart. "We'll see."<p>

* * *

><p>Of course Aya didn't give a damn if Youji was backing him up or not; too bad Youji didn't give a damn about <em>that<em>. An Aya letting his heart rule his head was a loose cannon in every sense of the word and every bit as liable to blow up in your face as he was in anybody else's and while that still might not, to borrow a phrase, have frightened a guy like Schuldig, it sure scared the Hell out of Youji. An angry Aya was not an Aya at his best, and if he was going to tangle with Schwarz he was going to have to be better even than that…

So Youji followed him. He shadowed the redhead to the second, smaller building – past piles of debris not worth the time to salvage or to steal, past propped-up rolls of filthy fiberglass, a skip filled near to overflowing with refuse, a sagging sawhorse with one leg sheared clean away – pushing open the double doors, and stepping inside.

A few months back, or however long ago it had been before the site was abandoned, the building must have been nearly ready for use. Now the carpet tiles that covered the entrance hall were lifting at the edges and the white-painted walls were mottled with the first bloom of encroaching mold while bundles of wires, no doubt intended for light fittings, sprouted from the ceilings like clumps of matted hair. If Schwarz were really hanging out in a place like this (and damn the evidence of his own lying eyes, Youji would have been happier to know there was nothing there and he should probably talk to a neurologist) it sure wouldn't be to soak in the ambiance.

"Aya," Youji murmured to Aya's turned back, "you sure you wanna go through with this?"  
>"You don't have to come," was all Aya said: well, what do you know, he's deigned to answer. Could be worse, Youji told himself, at least he remembers you're there.<p>

Not that he bothered to look back. Aya crossed the lobby in a few long strides, pushing open a door and slipping into a long, dark corridor smelling of stale air and damp plaster and, with Youji sticking close as a shadow, from there into an echoing stairwell illuminated by a series of smeared windows. Youji. The door to the hallway swung silently to behind them as they climbed, their slow, deliberate footsteps, for all their caution, seeming to sound perilously loud. Damn it all, it's still too quiet!

So much for surprise, but Schwarz had to have known they were coming even before they did. The best Youji dared hope for was not to be blindsided himself. You've walked into a trap, Kudou. If you're lucky, maybe you'll get to walk out again…

(And if we're very, very lucky, we all will – but really now, how likely is that?)

Second floor and they might as well start there as anywhere. Aya cautiously pushed open the stairwell door; Youji held his breath, waiting for any telltale squeaks or creaks but the door kept their secret, swinging open silently as he could have wished. Stealing after Aya into the gloom of the hallway – carpet here, too; that was good, for all it was peeling and reeked of mold – Youji followed his teammate as he, sure-footed and determined, slipped quiet as a ghost down the corridor and stopped short by an invitingly open door, katana poised.

Youji glanced over at Aya, raised his eyebrows. You reckon we should knock?

Aya simply scowled. _Schwarz._

Schwarz. There it is: the bait, the jaws of the trap, poised and ready to spring. You're _dead_, Youji thought again: too bad nobody'd thought to tell Crawford that. The tall American, arms folded, stood in a pool of light in the center of the empty room, silhouetted against the grimy full-length windows; Schuldig lolled against the rear wall, head tipped back, and when he met Youji's eyes he grinned. Schwarz were waiting and they were game.

* * *

><p>"I did think," the foreigner said, "we would be meeting again."<p>

Still tall. Still blonde and pale and sardonic, with eyes as cold and hard as chips of ice, still dressed, from head to foot, in a bodyguard's basic black. David Winters, his smoking pistol held firm in both outstretched hands, padded out into the center of the room. Eyes narrowed, he regarded Ken down the barrel of his gun with the detached, assessing air of a scientist – or of a professional soldier. Every inch the hunter and that, Hidaka, makes _you_…

Okay, smartass, you made your point.

"That's nice," Ken said. He straightened, stepped from the shadows: why pretend he had anywhere to hide? "You miss me or something?"  
>"Not fully." Winters's lips twisted at the corners, as if he were trying to smile; his eyes stayed cold. "But you must realize that you are an unusual child."<p>

An unusual _what_? Ken, coiled-spring tense and poised to strike, met head-on the challenge of Winters's stare; he took a single slow step to the side, and then another and realized, with a sudden onrush of something that felt very like relief, that he was angry. Who are you calling a child, buddy? It would have been nice to kid himself that was a relic of Winters's wonky Japanese. Christ, what kind of a cold hard bastard was he dealing with now? This guy (keep moving, for God's sake keep moving, a moving target's harder to hit) this guy was before he was _born_.

But if all the foreigner saw when he looked at him was a skinny, narrow-shouldered kid playing grown-up games he didn't quite understand – that was something, wasn't it, he could work with?

"Shut up," Ken said.  
>Winters quirked a brow. "Shut up?" he said. "You're not much of a one for talking, correct?"<br>"Fuck talking!"

No choice. I don't have _time_ for this!

It wasn't a plan. There was no time for anything as reasoned as that. Ken simply sprang for the man, swift and silent, suddenly all lethal direction as the claws of his bugnuks snapped back into place. Get the gun, he was thinking: to Hell with better ideas! Just get the goddamned_ gun_—

And Winters narrowed his eyes; he fired. He fired too soon. Ken dropped, lowering his head – the crack of the shot, the bullet singing over one shoulder and ricocheted off the wall, spinning off into nothing at all – barreling into Winters's midsection, knocking the gun from his hands, knocking the man from his feet. Winters fell, Ken on top of him, landing heavily in a puddle and kicking up a foul-smelling spray of still water and mud as the gun clattered to the ground and skittered off to get lost in the shadows.

Winters spat something in English, something which had the shape and weight of a curse: if the meaning was lost on Ken, the right to the jaw wasn't. He followed it up with a knee to the solar plexus and, the breath knocked from his body, pain bursting across his ribs, Ken doubled over, falling backward. He landed heavily on his back, blinking back stars, struggling to draw air into his lungs as Winters scrambled to his feet, eyes darting this way and that as he cast about himself for his missing gun. Ken raised his head just in time to see Winters aim a hard, brutal kick at his ribs and, with a yelp of surprise, he rolled away and scrambled back to his feet, wiping at his mouth, spitting.

He looked back up and Winters was watching him. And the man smiled, and said something in English, and came for him again.

"Son of a bitch!"

Winners strike first. Winters ducked away as Ken threw himself forward, swiping wildly at him with the bugnuks, the claws catching him a glancing blow across the chest: a hiss of indrawn breath through clenched teeth told a tale of hard-repressed pain. _Got you_—but, recovering well (shit, _shit_, that could have gone better!) the man surged forward again, aiming a forceful kick for the boy's legs: Ken sprang back, dodging away; he barely had time to find his feet before Winters was aiming another blow for head or neck or chest and he ducked, blocking the blow on one forearm and aiming a clumsy kick at the man's shins—

And Winters kicked him, hard: white flared behind his eyes as pain budded and bloomed in one knee and Ken heard himself screaming, felt himself fall. Fuck. _Fuck_. Tears sprang to his eyes; he blinked them back, dragging himself up onto his elbows, lashing out blindly with one hand as Winters drew closer. Stay back. Stay back, you sonofabitch – Jesus _fuck_ this man was good! Better than good: he forced his feet back under him, another bolt of agony shooting up his injured leg as he staggered against the wall. Couldn't take many more like that and walk away from this one!

Needed an opening. Needed out of here. You're not going to win this fight, Hidaka: best you can hope for is to walk away. So move it, you stupid bastard. Move…

Too little too late, God damn it! Shouldn't have tangled with this bastard. Should never have been here at all and what the fuck did knowing that help? Footsteps echoed in the corridor, the sound of running feet: Ken turned just in time to see the newcomer launch themselves down the stairs toward him, shrieking fit to wake the dead. Scarred and pale as bone, their single eye bright with mania. Farfarello. _Schwarz_.

"What the _Hell_—!"

* * *

><p>He didn't look phased. Say what you would about Crawford, Aya had to give him that much at least. The three-foot blade, the look of furious direction on Aya's pale face… all of it, to Crawford, was just so much eyewash. The serene, confident little smile didn't leave his lips as Aya strode toward him: the American didn't so much as blink as the sword plunged toward him, as the redhead struck—<p>

As Schuldig caught the flat of the blade between both hands.

"Nice try, though!"

Schuldig's grin was mocking, it was maddening, and yet for a moment Aya could do nothing but stare. Already off-balance, already thrown – already (since when did you get so weak?) guiltily thinking better of the whole thing. Where had _Schuldig_ come from, who taught that bastard to move? Crawford simply stood and watched, smile screwed tightly into place, meeting Aya's startled eyes over Schuldig's forest-green shoulder. Like he'd seen it all before…

Only a little bit of the future, he'd told Aya once, but a little was more than enough.

"This," Youji said from somewhere behind him, "is going well."  
>Ah, wit. Crawford's eyes flickered over to Youji for a moment, then back. "I won't say <em>what a surprise<em>," he said coolly: why shouldn't he smile? He had Weiss exactly where he wanted them and they all knew that, too. "And there I was wondering this might be a shade too obvious for you."  
>Like he didn't know! "Don't underestimate me," Aya growled. "We've got our reasons—"<br>"Sure," Schuldig said. "Sure you have. But that's not why you're here. Is it?"

And, letting go of the sword, he aimed a kick at Aya's midsection, darting away as he fell back then moving forward again, landing two three four hard blows to Aya's head and shoulders before the young man had a chance to react. Aya staggered, blinking – yes, this is _going well_ – riding with the pain as Schuldig sprang clear, easily evading the katana's next clumsy swing.

"Aya!"

Youji – Christ, that dumb kid! – Youji simply sounded angry. Instinct had him going for the wire, yanking a cobweb-fine skein from his wristwatch and moving for Schuldig as Aya ducked clear. _This is gonna get messy_: Crawford stepped up to the plate, undoing his collar button and loosening his immaculately-knotted tie before surging forward and snatching for Youji's wrist. The blonde spat a curse, twisted in his grasp, aimed a savage kick at Crawford's midsection – and then Schuldig was on him again and Youji could have been safe back home for all it mattered. Schuldig smiled at him and Aya moved, but when the sword scythed down the German wasn't even there.

"Damn you," Aya hissed. "Get back here!"  
>"I don't think so," said Schuldig, and laughed.<p>

(Focus. He's angry, already too angry to think. There's Schuldig, a dead man sprung up, and it's up to him to see the bastard's put down again for good – but she's safe now, they both are: he has no power over you. _Focus_, something whispers to him in a voice that sounds a lot like Shion's. This isn't the way, Ran. Focus…

(But this man hurt his sister, and Sakura, too: Aya wasn't listening. You think this is a joke, you bastard?)

"Hey," Schuldig said airily, "is it my fault you're amusing?"  
>Don't rise to it. That's exactly what he's counting on. Aya started, grip tightening about the hilt of his katana—<em>no<em>. Don't rise to it. "A_mus_ing?"  
>"Amusing," Schuldig repeated. "Take this whole business – whoops, careful where you wave that thing! – all that trouble over your <em>dear<em> sister." Don't rise to it: damn it, Aya thought, he's _dancing_! Two steps forward then swaying back, hands raised, as Aya came at him again, Schuldig might have been dancing with him as fighting for his life. God almighty, he thinks this is fun? "Nothing to say, Aya? Don't tell me you've forgotten about it already."  
>Don't rise to it. "Leave her out of this, Schuldig!"<br>"Oh, but I don't want to. Such a sweet little thing. And so pretty, too. It was a shame to lose her so quickly. Crawford had such high hopes for her…"  
>"Damn you!"<p>

(No. _No_. She's safe now. This has nothing to do with her!)

It didn't matter.

Of course Schuldig had seen it coming. Aya swung for him, slashing violently down with the sword; Schuldig jumped nimbly clear and, before Aya could recover, kicked savagely at his bent knee.

Aya fell. Landed face-down in an awkward sprawl, the breath knocked from his lungs, his entire body jarred by the sudden impact. The katana slipped from his grasp, clattered to the floor to lie by his side: instinctively he groped for it, fingers brushing briefly against the hilt before Schuldig brought his heel down on the back of Aya's outstretched hand, trapping it against the floor while he kicked the sword from his reach. Aya winced, bit back a gasp of pain, tried to tug his hand free, and Schuldig simply laughed, and pressed his foot down harder.

"Think about it," he murmured, crouching down to look Aya in the face. "Don't you think she's too old for pigtails? She's not a little girl any more, Aya. But then you'd be the last one to notice that now, wouldn't you."  
>"Bastard," Aya spat – and all he was thinking was, what does he mean? Not a little… what the Hell's he trying to imply?<br>Schuldig smiled indulgently. "Oh, you're a bright guy. I'm sure you can work it out—"

A startled cry. The sound of splintering wood.

Schuldig frowned, and pushed himself upward. Aya raised his head. What the Hell…?

Crawford stood by the window, gazing incuriously over one shoulder through the empty frame of one of the full-length windows, the night wind tugging at the ends of his hair, the fabric of his shirt. Utterly composed. Feeling the shock on his own face, Aya simply stared at him; at the gaping hole where, five minutes before, there had been a rattling pane of dusty glass. There was no sign of Youji.

"Funny," Crawford said calmly. "I thought cats landed on their feet."

* * *

><p>Oh, God. This is <em>bad<em>.

Ken stumbled forward, forcing himself to ignore the pain that, with every other step, shot up his leg. Metal clashed with metal as he caught the end of Farfarello's sai on the bugnuk claws, kicked out wildly at chest or leg or who cared what, driving the madman back – for now. It wasn't enough. It would have to do. Door. Where the fuck was the fucking door!? He scrambled back and away, falling back against the wall as he cast about himself wildly for – or anything, as long as it was an exit.

And Farfarello drew nearer, a humorless grin twisting his full lips: don't panic. Don't panic. Stop thinking about it and move. Move, Goddamn it, just _move_, you've got to get out of here, got to do it fast. Farfarello alone was bad enough, Winters alone was – but like this? This was defeat, this was – you're going to die, Ken realized with sudden dreadful clarity. (No. No, that can't be…) Hidaka, you are going to die.

No.

"Don't even _think_ it!"

The second blow – cursing, Ken ducked away as the madman's blade sought out his eye – landed just above his head, the point of the sai scraping harsh against the wall as Ken pushed himself away. Hissing in pain, he scrambled out from beneath Farfarello's arm and lunging forward, only for Farfarello to bring his elbow down hard on the back of his neck. Ken stumbled and fell, wrapping his arms about his head: he landed awkwardly on one side, momentarily stunned, caught off-guard by the fact he could feel anything at all. Bastard could have killed you. Holy fuck, he really could have—!

It would have been the easiest thing in the world to collapse forward and wait for the end: he never had done things the easy way. Ken yelped as Farfarello followed him down, rolling away as the sai drove down toward his throat and buried itself harmlessly in the mud by the crook of his shoulder. Shit. Shit. _Move_!

No time to think about it. Blame it on willpower or sheer-bloody-mindedness: the breath burning in his lungs, his entire body alive with pain, Ken forced himself back to his feet, the entire room seeming to swim about him as he stood – and he's still coming. Holy _fuck_, the mad bastard was still fucking _coming_!

"Stay away," Ken said, and it sounded as stupid and panicky and dumb as it always did in the movies. "Stay back!"

Like Farfarello was going to listen to that! Don't panic, don't panic: sure as a nightmare, the madman came for him again and Ken swiped wildly at him with one hand, catching Farfarello across the upper arm and he might not have bothered, damn it! He just kept coming. He swiped the blood away with one pale hand, blinking incuriously at it like it had nothing to do with him, and then he forgot about it. Ken stumbled backward, one arm raised defensively – Christ, just stay back! – as Farfarello prowled towards him, blood coursing down his arm. Oh, God, Ken was thinking. Oh, God, what the Hell do I do now?

Then Winters shot him.

The impact knocked him off his feet. Something slammed into his left shoulder, so sharp and so sudden that for a moment Ken thought Winters must have pushed him over. Too shocked to remember to scream, Ken just about had time to think _oh fuck _and then he was falling, catching his head a painful blow as his body hit the floor. White flashed behind his eyes, pain bursting in his skull: a split second of exquisite agony, and then nothing but black.

* * *

><p>"Don't touch him."<p>

Farfarello got there first, bending to the unconscious boy as if he couldn't quite work out why he should have stopped moving. Winters waved him away with the still-smoking gun – no, you get back – dropping to his knees to press two fingers to the boy's throat: he nodded. Still breathing, at least. Working quickly, Winters stripped the gauntlets from Ken's hands and cast them to the floor, followed by the heavy leather jacket and, after a moment of thought, the boots and absurd orange shirt, then bound his wrists securely behind his back with a pair of plastic handcuffs.

So much for the kid. The weapon was rather more interesting. Picking up one of the gloves, Winters held the thing up to the light, puzzling over the mechanism. Looked like… that would be some kind of pressure pad, wouldn't it? Cautiously he pressed down on it, frowning as, with a soft metal _snick_, the wicked steel claws slipped free of their housing. Very ingenious: he rubbed absently at his chest, then at his fingers, sticky with his own drying blood. What nasty minds Orientals had. Who on earth would think it was a good idea to arm a teenager with these things?

But that the boy could tell them later. Winters let the glove fall and, getting to his feet, reached for his cellphone.

You couldn't trust an Irishman. Turn your back on the bastards for more than a few seconds… well, God only knew what they'd get up to! The creak of leather, the rustle of fabric on fabric – Winters hadn't even finished dialing the American's number before he turned back to find Farfarello crouched in the dirt at Ken's side, fingers snagged in the unconscious boy's untidy hair as he yanked him bodily to his knees. Absorbed as a child torturing ants, he regarded him for a moment, then placed the point of the sai to Ken's temple. His fingers tensed on the release.

"Stop that! Don't you speak English, you stupid Mick? I said don't touch him!"  
>And Farfarello looked up, his head canted curiously to one side. "No?" he asked.<br>"_No_," Winters said. "No."

And leveled the gun at Farfarello's head.

That the madman understood. Farfarello hissed, dropping Ken to the floor again: the boy pitched bonelessly forward onto his front and lay still.

"And why shouldn't I?" Farfarello asked, sulky as a disappointed child. He gave Winters a flat, hostile glare; he kicked Ken in the ribs – that was childish, too – as if it were somehow all his fault. The boy didn't so much as whimper. "Acts," he hissed. "Chapter twelve, verse twenty-three. And forthwith an angel of the Lord struck him because he had not given the honor to God, and being eaten up by worms he gave up the ghost: there's a precedent."  
>"<em>Religion<em>," Winters muttered under his breath, shaking his head. Of course. "I'd like to see you try that on the President when you're explaining why we had this one right where we wanted and then you lobotomized him. Don't touch him. We need this boy to talk."

* * *

><p>The first dart had merely grazed her: all that was good for was taking the edge off her a bit. The second, though, had caught Komachi square in the thigh – she cursed viciously, yanked the dart from her leg and cast it contemptuously to the ground; and what was that supposed to achieve, kiddo? After that it was only a matter of time…<p>

Still time enough to die. Thirty seconds, maybe forty – the dart hit the ground with a soft _ting_ and Komachi sprang for him again. Omi leapt back, snatching for another dart. His hand snapped out, the dart flew from his fingers and straight toward her. The girl ducked sideways, the dart nicking a tiny triangle of flesh from her ear as it whipped past her cheek: twenty seconds and still she came, barreling straight into him and knocking him from his feet.

Omi hit the ground hard, crying out in shock and in pain as the impact jarred his shoulders, his spine – and still she came, following him down, knocking the air from him as she landed heavily on his chest, pinning him to the floor with one knee pressed hard against his ribs. Omi bit back a curse, he writhed beneath her (ten, no, fifteen seconds: did he have those left?) as, breathing hard, her cheeks flushed with exertion, Komachi scraped the tip of her stiletto slowly across the exposed skin of his throat. She smiled.

"Bye-bye, Mr. Shopkeeper," she crooned – and yelped in surprise as Omi rammed the business end of his crossbow under her chin.

Five. Four. Three. Wait for it—

And the girl slumped over, collapsing bonelessly on top of him, her lashes fluttering. The knife slipping from suddenly-unresponsive fingers Komachi groaned as Omi pushed her off him, falling heavily onto her back with her pale eyes half-open. Man – Omi sprang to his feet, another dart poised, just in case, between forefinger and thumb – that really was way too close. Breathing hard, he watched as Komachi rolled onto her front and, from there, forced herself to her hands and knees, slow and deliberate as a drunkard.

"What…" Even her voice sounded sluggish, her tongue thick in her mouth. "Damn it, what the Hell did you _do_ to me?"  
>"It's not fatal." Omi tucked the dart back in its case. "You'll be all right, but you've probably got about two minutes before you lose consciousness. You should get somewhere safe."<br>The girl raised her head, teeth gritted. "You little—"  
>"You really should leave," Omi said. "You're hurt and we're done here. Just call your friends and go."<p>

He stepped back (three shots, or four: he'd lost count) one hand pressed to the sluggishly-bleeding gash on his neck. Two paces, three – the girl groped clumsily for her knife, clumsily she heaved it at him. Hopelessly wide, it landed harmlessly in the dust some six feet from where Omi was standing, and he sighed. I'm sorry, but you're through, and I don't have time for you right now…

"You should go," Omi said again. "I promise I won't follow you."

And turned back to the building, and ran. Hang in there, Ken-kun. I'm coming!

* * *

><p>Well, you seem to still be alive.<p>

There should have been stars. Real or imaginary, logic dictated stars and there weren't any. Just a burnished canopy of off-black, a few threads of floating cloud, and the blank face of a building that could have been half the offices in the city. Opening his eyes – there'd been Crawford and the sudden shock of impact, and then everything had gone suddenly upward – Youji gazed at the sky for a moment or two, trying to work out where he was and why he was still around to do it at all. You just fell out a window, he reminded himself. Surely you should be a bit more dead?

His back ached, and his shoulders; he thought he'd done something to one of his legs. On his back in what looked a lot like a skip, Youji was lying on something soft and foul-smelling that yielded sickeningly beneath him when he tried to sit. Looks like there's your answer as to why you're still breathing. And he wanted a shower, which meant he was most likely going to be fine.

"I'm all right," Youji announced to nobody in particular. "I meant to do that…"

And there, right on cue, was Aya.

Aya, all long violet eyes and cool impassivity, leaning over the edge of the skip like he'd expected nothing less from him. Of course you're in a skip, Youji, and I'd pull you out if you didn't seem so at home there – yeah, thanks for that Fujimiya. Whose brilliant idea was this anyway?

"They left," Aya said tightly.  
>"Nice to see you, too." Grabbing the edge of the skip Youji pulled himself upright, tugging a chunk of filthy fiberglass from his hair. "Thanks for the concern, I'll treasure it always. I suppose a hand out would be too much to ask for?"<p>

Oh, we're pretending we didn't catch that. Right. You got lucky with the skip, Kudou; bit too much to hope that Aya might suddenly have developed an altruistic streak as well. You're still not his sister, right? Ignoring the throbbing ache in his limbs, the bolt of pain that shot up his back, Youji pulled himself up and over the edge of the skip, half-jumping, half-falling to the ground to land in an awkward semi-sprawl. _Whoa_. Yeah, _definitely_ did something to his leg. Okay, that was a bad idea. Or another one.

Might as well call the skip the fifth member of Weiss at this point. Snatching for a handhold, Youji pulled himself to his feet, leaning heavily back against the skip's cool metal side and giving the thing a companionable pat. Thanks, man. I owe you one…

Wasn't gonna be walking out of here, not under his own steam. "_Ow_. Dammit. Sorry, buddy," he said, giving Aya a wry, pained smile, "you're gonna have to lend me your arm…"

Wordlessly, Aya stepped to him, slung Youji's arm over his shoulder; gratefully, Youji leaned against him, a little more heavily than he'd have liked, testing his weight on his injured foot. No. No, definitely not. He hissed in pain, features briefly contorting into a grimace. God _damn_ it—! yeah, you're _definitely_ going to be helping me out of here. It was, after all that, the least that Aya could do.

"Thanks."

All he could do now was hope they didn't run into any more trouble between here and the car. What would he do, fall over at them?

Aya's arm about his waist, his fingers digging almost painfully into Youji's side, the pair made their slow, graceless way back across the debris-strewn yards. Somewhere just beyond the wire a car door slammed, the engine coughing into life as it slipped slowly from the curbside to lose itself on the expressway; Youji stumbled onward, head hanging forward, concentrating on nothing but placing one foot in front of the other. Damn it, the last time he felt like this he'd been staring, bleary-eyed, at a 25,000 yen bar bill. Not like he'd had fun tonight but this, at least, was a damn sight easier on the wallet.

"_Aya-kun_!"

Aya's head snapped up. He tried to let go of Youji's hand. Oh no you don't, Fujimiya…!

Omi lurched forward out of the shadows, face stricken. Blood streaming down his neck, a bundle of heavy, dark material clasped tight to his chest. Youji met the boy's eyes, and the look he caught in them chilled him to the bone. Fighting back a wave of dizziness, he glanced about himself, looking for – for what? He didn't know. All he knew was that look meant trouble. Big, serious trouble: Christ, he thought in sudden, horrible shock, where the _Hell_ is _Ken_?

"Oh, Aya-kun!"  
>Savagely, Aya tried to twist his hand free. No, we're still not doing that. "What is it?"<br>"It's Ken-kun."

And Omi's eyes drifted down, down to the tangle of dark material caught in his arms. Youji followed his gaze. Brown, leather: a jacket, ripped and spattered with grim, dark stains that could only have been blood. Oh, no…

"Ken-kun's gone."

_- to be continued -_


End file.
